


all the ashes out

by Perfunctorily



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Post - The Winds of Winter Theon sample chapter, Theon Greyjoy gets sent to the wall, nobody is having a very good time at all on the wall
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:51:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22341334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Perfunctorily/pseuds/Perfunctorily
Summary: Spared from execution after the battle of Winterfell, Theon Greyjoy is sent to the Wall, only to find that all is not well at Castle Black.
Relationships: Satin Flowers/Jon Snow, Satin Flowers/Theon Greyjoy, Theon Greyjoy/Jon Snow
Comments: 27
Kudos: 77





	1. Theon

There was no curtain wall to mark when they had truly entered the grounds of Castle Black, no gate to ride through, nor watchtowers. But the dim outline of a lichyard came looming out of the night, then an outbuilding on the other side, and then, almost without warning, they were in the midst of it. Theon Greyjoy, teetering on his garron, heard the crotal bells jangle on Ser Justin’s bridle as he pulled on his reins to slow his horse in the middle of what appeared to be the yard. Theon’s own horse obediently dropped from its steady trot to a slow walk behind it without a cue or move from Theon himself.

Massey looked around him, and raised a hand to push his hair out of his eyes before looking around again. Theon looked too, stifling a nervous giggle. They were here. His reckoning had been delayed, and then delayed again, but there would be little time left now. _All he can do is kill me. Jon Snow is a bastard, but he is not Ramsay, he will take no more than my life._ And his life was worth little and less. He felt his chin tremble anyway, the titter turning into a full body shiver from the cold. Did they have dungeons at Castle Black? Flaying crosses?

What he saw when he looked around him was trenches, and low walls of packed snow built along them to heighten their cover. Makeshift fortifications that did not face outward, as they might if they were meant to defend the castle from a threat coming north up the King’s Road, but instead they were built to face each other across the yard. Theon tried and failed to stifle the next giggle, the high pitched sound mingled with the bells of the rest of the company that were riding behind him. _They are having a snowball war_. 

He remembered building walls like these in the courtyard at Winterfell. Remembered Bran and Arya laughing as they stuffed snow down the back of Robb’s cloak. _I took a snowball in the side of the head. I thought it had been Jon Snow that threw it but when I turned it was Sansa, ducking back behind her wall to pack another_. For a moment he could almost hear the laughter.

But this was no children’s game. The memory faded. He had seen real battles, real war. And there was nothing playful in the purpose of these walls. Whoever built them was afraid of an attack, and an imminent one. But not one coming from the south.

The horses that had called this castle home, those the three guides from the watch rode, wickered with relief to be out of the wood. They had all been uneasy since they’d set out at forced march pace before dawn that morning. The smell of something on the wind disturbed them. Theon had felt it too, been too sick with it to even try to chew the dried meat they’d given him, peering behind every tree for the hounds. In the dead silence of the Wolfswood, he could swear he heard them baying, dogging their heels. 

He only thought he caught a glimpse of it once, whatever it was. Just as the sun was dipping below the treeline, to their left, the trees had opened up, and at the top of a low hill, white against the yellow of the westering sun, there had been the shape of a dog.

He stared, frozen, the sunset burning into his eyes, sure that it was looking right at him. But then the king’s man Ser Merrick had come up next to him, blocking the view for a moment.

“See something, turncloak?” 

And then it was gone. For half an hour after that, its outline had appeared, red inside his eyelids when he blinked.

They had ridden all day with the watchmen guides assuring them that they were growing close. Not wanting to spend another night camped in the snow, Ser Justin pushed them to ride into the night to reach Castle Black. It seemed to get colder with every minute the sun was down, or perhaps with every step they took northward. _It is not so cold as that, not so cold as the blizzard I carried Jeyne through. At least I have a cloak and good leather gloves._ If he did freeze, so much the better, but he knew they would not let him die. Else they would not have taken such care to feed and clothe him, or to keep Ser Merrick and Ser Collen between him and Sour Alyn and Grunt.

Whenever Theon lagged close to where Ser Godry kept the prisoners and the baggage wayns, Alyn would start to whisper threats and promises, and Grunt would look at him with much and more behind his narrowed eyes. It had been Theon that stole Lady Arya out from under their noses, Theon who’d cost them whatever their punishment had been. 

Ser Justin was usually sure to keep him well out of their reach. Mors Umber, Wyman Manderly, Flint, Norrey, Wull, Even Lady Barbrey and Stannis. all of them would be most displeased if they learned their turncloak had quietly perished on the journey. _Would Jeyne weep for me? If Jon Snow takes my head, will she have any more tears left to spill?_

Behind him he heard Gerret and Spat dismount, talking softly to their horses or each other. He trembled, but did not try to follow suit. His legs were so cramped and stiff he was sure he would not be able to dismount save by simply falling off his horse. Even if his legs had been limber and strong, he could not have gripped the saddle to swing a foot over. His wrists were bound, if loosely, and he could scarcely feel his hands. The one arm had been wholly useless since he had hung from the wall in Stannis’ tower, and the other was hardly better. They had neither of them been any help in guiding his horse. He’d given it its head almost from the first day of the journey. It was to the credit of the garron’s mellow sheeply nature that it had simply followed Ser Justin’s horse at a polite distance and plodded on as though Theon weren’t there at all, and carried him safely to The Wall.

The Wall. Huge and white and shining in the moonlight. It loomed over the whole castle, so tall that it blotted out half the northern stars. He let out a manic bark of laughter in wonder at the sight of it. He’d never thought to see it in his lifetime. He hadn’t thought he’d live to see anything but the roots of a weirwood on a frozen island by a crofter’s village, and the gleaming edge of King Stannis’ sword. 

_But the tree knew my name!_

He skinned back is lips and gave The Wall a great splinter-toothed grin, even as the frozen air shot white knives of pain into his gums. He was Theon Greyjoy, he was alive, and he had seen a wonder of the world.

“Grouse, catch the Turncloak, he’s gone off giggling again” said Gerret.

Alden snorted, the long black grouse feather he wore in his cap bobbing, “aw let him. What’s the harm?” 

A horn sounded from somewhere and a man came dashing up to them from the direction of one of the makeshift walls of snow, the one cutting off a long low building from the rest.

Not dressed in black, and wielding a stone-headed spear, he looked at them for a moment, eyes darting from Ser Justin, who reined up in front of him to Ser Collen behind Theon, past the three brothers in black, the tall braavosi, Abel and the other prisoners, past the maester with the cages of ravens, and landed on Ser Godry behind them. “You’re that knight, Farring, the giant slayer.” He planted his spear in the snow and scratched his chin with a gloved hand, looking back at Justin Massey “The Giantslayer and the Wrongway Ranger. You were king’s men.” 

_King’s men, Queen’s men,_ Theon knew the difference. Queens men wanted him burned, king’s men wanted him beheaded. 

The man was a wildling, he realized, feeling a little dizzy. He’d seen wildlings before. He’d killed one. He had saved Bran’s life in the wolfswood and Robb had scolded him like a child for it. 

_Abel is a wildling, and all his washerwomen. Though that’s not his name, not Abel, Mance._ That was an important name. He had to remember it. _Mance, it rhymes with Dance._ He snickered to himself, No one else knew who Stannis had let slip through his fingers yet again. Abel had cut his long hair and acquired two black eyes, even the knights who had held him captive before didn’t recognize him.

Smiling down at the wildling from atop his garron, Ser Justin nodded, “The king sent us, with glad tidings and prisoners for Lord Commander Snow. Where is he? I have messages for him from the king. The rookery at Winterfell burned when we took the castle so he could not send a raven.”

“The king sent you?” the man repeated, like he didn’t understand it.

“Yes,” Massey repeated, “the king sent us. I must speak with the Lord Commander. Can you take me to him?”

“Satin! Leathers! Jax!” the wildling yelled over his shoulder, making Theon start, and quiver in the saddle, threatening his already tenuous balance there. 

Behind the man, three heads popped up from the wall at the shout.

The wildling called again, “Satin! It’s king’s men!” then back to Massey, grimly he said, “you’ll want to hear this from the steward.”

One of the figures vaulted over the low wall and jogged up. This one was a brother in black, holding a crossbow. He was taller, but not as broad as the wildling, and when he pulled his hood back to look up at Ser Justin, it was apparent that he was a good deal fairer, with curls and big dark eyes that he turned appraisingly on their company, much as the wildling had. “You’re from his grace, King Stannis,” he said after a moment, as though he was just figuring it out. 

Justin Massey threw his hands up, jangling the bells. “Yes! King Stannis sent us! Has the whole of castle black gone deaf since we departed? The king sent me with these prisoners to announce the defeat of Lord Bolton and the fall of Winterfell into royal occupation, and to impart some private messages to Lord Commander Snow. Our horses are hungry and tired, as are we. May we stable them and be about the king’s business? Or must I repeat it again?”

The pretty steward, unfazed by Massey’s outburst, rested his crossbow in the crook of an elbow and exchanged a glance with his wildling friend. “There was…we had a raven from Winterfell.” 

Ser Justin looked as though he might burst. “We had no ravens at Winterfell! The rookery burned in the taking of the castle.”

“Stannis lives?” Someone spoke up from the other side. Two men had walked over from the opposite wall, the one by the tower. A watchman and a Stormland knight.

“The letter said Stannis was killed and lord Bolton still held Winterfell.” The black brother eyed them mistrustingly, hand on his dagger hilt.

Satin brandished his crossbow. “Let him speak, Runnymudd.”

“Don’t point that thing at me, whore,” the man spat back.

“I’ll feather you before you can pull your dagger,” Satin snarled.

“See if I don’t skin you with it!”

Theon started to titter nervously, his head was swimming, and the raised voices unnerved him.

Ser Justin pushed his hair out of his eyes, looking back and forth between them.“The Lord Commander…,” he said again, helplessly. 

As he watched the stormland knight next to Runnymudd silently draw steel, Theon’s laughter was a shriek in his head, but perhaps he was making no sound at all, or only quiet high squeaks, because none of them seemed to notice. His horse danced a step back, caught between the shouting men as their argument escalated, sensing his fear. 

“Go on, then! Take them to the Lord Commander! He’s just in the ice cells.” Runnymudd gestured back toward the wall he had come from “Go and try, Jon Snow won’t protect you.”

“Say his name again, Alf. Say it again I’ll make you eat this crossbow you traitor!” 

Even Ser Justin’s horse was nervous, it snorted and gave an unhappy stomp. Never trained for war, the shouting disturbed the mild garron as much as it did Theon. 

Alf said something else, and Satin shouted back, but there was a ringing in Theon’s ears and the words all blurred together. He could see them on the brink of blows, though. The argument seemed rather distant, as though at the end of a tunnel, and it all tilted sideways just as Alf actually did draw the dagger. But Satin never fired his crossbow, because they, all of them, stopped yelling to look over in surprise when Theon simply fell off his horse.

* * *

“Dead.” Ser Justin paced up and down the narrow aisle of floor that had been cleared in the shield hall. “Dead!” He thundered.

Theon wondered if he knew he was doing an impression of King Stannis, and a poor one at that.

“Stannis will rage.”

“And he’s welcome to,” an old wildling who was as wide as he was tall with no hair on top of his head, but enough beard for three men said, “I did a fair bit o’ raging myself. Bloody pain in the arse, that little lord crow but I liked him a fair lot better than you and that queen o’ yours. And I don’t doubt if I met your king I’d like him even less.” He’d introduced himself as Tormund, some kind of wildling king, with as many titles as a man could stack on top of his name without it falling over.

Theon was laid out on one of the long tables, with people milling all around him. The hall was crowded, dozens of children were underfoot between at least a hundred wildling warriors. There were far fewer black brothers, and one of them, an old half blind man, was poking at his bad shoulder. and an old half blind man poking at his bad shoulder. The other prisoners were all seated nearby, Abel was closest, just on the other side of his head, but Sour Alyn and Grunt were a good deal closer than Theon would have liked them to be. Since they’d gotten some hot broth down him, he was not so dizzy, and things were beginning to be less nonsensical. But every time he thought of it again he was sent back into a giggling fit. _Dead! Jon Snow is dead! He’ll not have my head after all!_ It was too droll. _Delayed and delayed and then sent to be judged by a dead man._ If he were not so busy laughing. He might have spared a moment to mourn the boy that had been the next thing to a brother to him. He had never liked Jon Snow, but they had understood each other in their way. Now he was dead, as dead as Robb. _And it was never Arya, only Jeyne, it rhymes with feign. He died for her and she wasn’t even truly the little sister that he loved so well._

“He read the letter aloud in the hall, and asked that the wildlings and any black brother that would forsake his vows march with him on Winterfell of their own free will.” A man that looked to be a septon said.

Another old man continued as the septon took a drink from his cup,“then some of the men took it into their own hands when he went out alone and unguarded to inform the queen. I–” 

“As I recall,Yarwyck,” Tormund drawled over him, “you were one o’ them.”

He flushed, “I left the hall with the Lord Steward, it’s true. But I argued that Snow should be detained, dissuaded from rash action. I had no part in the assassination, no builder in this hall did.” 

Massey stilled in his pacing. “Have you this letter in your possession? I would like to read it with my own eyes. Farring as well. And we will have to inform the king.”

It was as though Ramsay had reached out and killed him with his own hands. Somehow his reach extended to The Wall and killed Jon Snow. Theon was light headed and giddy with it. _If he couldn’t have me, nobody could._ They told him Ramsay was dead, but they had said as much before. Even now there might be a Reek whispering in Stannis’ ear.

The Steward, Satin spoke up then, he’d been sitting somewhere by Theon’s left foot. “He had it on his person at the time. Either it is still with the body, or the queen’s men and the mutineers have it.”

Ser Godry snorted, arms crossed and leaning his hip against a table. “I say good riddance. He was a craven and a traitor. With Snow gone the king can put someone worthy of the position in command.” 

Ser Justin gave Farring a withering look, “Worry not, Godry, with Snow gone there are still plenty of men his grace would prefer to you for lord of Winterfell.”

Ser Godry sneered. “Going to stake your claim, Massey?”

“I have other claims in mind, I’m no carrion crow to pick prizes from dead men’s fingers.”

Theon barked another laugh. “Not dead.”

Massey grimaced. “Someone quiet that creature. I listened to his gibbering all the way from Winterfell.” 

“That’s no way to speak to your future good-brother.” Theon struggled to lean up on his good arm. “My sweet sister will surely not begrudge you a spot at the foot of her throne.” He grinned wickedly at him. _If there’s room between Qarl and Tristifer_.

A hand clamped onto Theon’s mouth and forced him back down to the table. He smelled foul breath and rotten teeth. “Now Reek, what did lord Ramsay teach you about speaking out of turn?” Sour Alyn whispered in his ear. 

“My name is Theon,” he snarled, and tried to bite his hand but the other only found his throat, and held him down. 

Theon writhed and thrashed, he wanted to scream, but Alyn was strong, and Theon’s shoulders ached so, Grunt was holding down his ankles now too. His back arched off the table and tears streamed out of his eyes, and then he fell limp. He was too exhausted to put up a fight. Days and days on the road north with no food but the hard dried meat that he could only eat in tiny pieces had left him feeble and easily tired. 

When Theon opened his eyes again, everyone was looking at him. Disgust, horror, and pity writ plain on all their faces. 

Sour Alyn smiled a rotten smile and patted him on the cheek. “Finished, Reek?” 

“Theon...,” he mumbled, and the hand came back over his mouth, muffling the word.

“Theon?” It was Satin who said it. “Theon Greyjoy?”

Ser Justin and even Ser Godry were looking unnerved. Massey nodded. “Yes… That’s the turncloak. He was for the Lord Commander. A gift from his grace."

It had been Jeyne that thought of it. She had sat in Lord Eddard’s chair, where he himself had sat and called himself the prince of Winterfell, and plead for clemency. 

She had been so small in the great carved thing, but her voice had been sure and steady. “It is true he slew my brothers. And yet, he saved me. How can I decide the fate of such a man? But, my lords must not forget. Lord Eddard had another son. For the debt I owe him, and for his service, I ask for mercy. If it please your grace, my lady, my lords of the North, I ask that he pass into the hands of my brother Jon Snow. Let the Lord Commander decide his fate.”

She played the lady well, he could almost have believed she was Arya for true, if he forgot everything about the little girl with messy hair. 

“I saved her,” Theon said into Sour Alyn’s palm, tasting sweat and leather. Nobody heard.

“But if Snow is no more, I see no reason to keep him alive.” Justin Massey finished. Then he seemed to forget Theon altogether. He resumed his pacing. "I'll have to speak with the queen. She and Princess Shireen should be brought to Wintefell now that it is secure. The wildling prince as well, and Princess Val."

Everyone shifted uncomfortably, more glances were exchanged. 

Yarwyck spoke again. "The assassination occurred during a commotion. The giant killed one of your knights, Patrek of King's Mountain, when he tried to fetch the boy from the tower for the red woman."

The septon nodded vigorously, having emptied his wine cup. "She wanted him for her heathen fires."

Offhandedly, Massey said, "mind how you speak about the lady Melisandre."

Yarwyck continued, "in the confusion the babe vanished."

"The wolf devoured it!" some wildling called from the crowd.

Ser Justin gaped, pushed his hair back, and thought for a moment. Then he carefully asked, "and Princess Val?"

"Vanished as well," said the builder, "perhaps savaged by the wolf when she tried to protect the babe from it."

Theon watched Abel very closely. His bruised eyes were sharp and hard, but he made no move. For some reason, his gaze was on Satin. 

Just then the hall went quiet. The chatter and bustle of hundreds of wildlings and watchmen eating and talking and moving around was replaced with whispers and held breaths. He could hear the wind blowing and then the closing of a door. 

Sour Alyn was distracted enough that Theon could lift his head to see, and he understood why all tongues had stilled and all eyes had gone to the entrance.

The red woman had come into the shield hall. 


	2. Satin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With news of Stannis' victory, conflict between Tormund's wildlings and the queen's men may be resolved, it's decided that something must be done with Jon Snow's body, and Satin finds something in the Lord Commander's chamber.

Everyone, even the senseless laughing man on the table went silent and still to look when the priestess entered the hall. She was tall, but it was not just that. She was not so tall as the Braavosi, Tycho Nestoris, not even as tall as Grenn. If any man had come in, or any other woman, there would have been barely any notice paid, but lady Melisandre demanded their full attention simply by her presence. Satin had never been one to be distracted by a beautiful woman, but even he caught his breath to stare as she made her unhurried way toward them through the crowd. Warlords, warriors, and watchmen alike gave her a wide berth. 

When she arrived at their table, she cast her red gaze over all of them. She smiled, and it was as though every torch in the hall burned brighter. “Ser Malegorn tells me there are glad tidings from Winterfell.” Her voice was deep and dark.

Satin watched, trying to be unobtrusive from the other side of the table where the prisoners sat around Theon Greyjoy and Clydas, as Ser Godry giantslayer, hand on the fiery heart that clasped his cloak, gave half a bow. “My lady, His Grace has taken Winterfell. R'hllor has been good.”

Her face betrayed nothing of the days of uncertainty and conflict, the night fires and the blood in the snow. “Glad indeed. The queen will be delighted to hear it, and the princess. They have been most anxious for news of him. We all have.” 

“Your fires told you nothing of the king’s victory?” One of the other knights said, an older man with close cropped hair. Satin did not miss that what pinned his cloak in place was the crowned stag, rather than the fiery heart of R’hllor. _A king’s man_.

Her smile tightened. “The fires have been vague. A great storm came and obscured my view of his grace. The lord of light is mysterious in his ways, I can only interpret what he shows me. But perhaps now that the storm has passed, and peace may be returned to the North, he will see fit to send me clearer visions. Perhaps with a sacrifice...” 

The knight exhaled sharply through his nose and looked away. Septon Cellador, who sat on the other side of Othell Yarwyck glowered into his empty cup. But, by Satin’s reckoning, he was not yet drunk enough to muster the nerve to speak against the priestess. 

Ser Justin Massey stepped forward, cutting off Godry Giantslayer, who had turned his glower on the king’s man. “We walked through that same storm on the march from Deepwood Motte to Winterfell. It stretched a fortnight’s trek into moons of slogging. I’m sure it obscured much and more.” He gave his disarming smile, all flaxen hair and good-natured humor, but ser Godry did not look disarmed. “My lady, I must ask about Lord Commander Snow. The king counted on his command at the wall. His counsel on the Karstark plot may have decided the outcome of the battle, and his sister’s gratitude binds the North to our cause. Have his killers been allowed to go free?”

“Snow was a useful ally to his grace, and his death was unfortunate, but justice among the brothers of the watch is not the queen’s to dole out.”

“Ha! Justice.” Tormund spat. “Harborin’ turncloaks and murderers, that’s what your queen calls justice.”

Othell Yarwyck frowned. “The administration of justice has been difficult, ser. With the storm, and the queen’s men and wildlings at odds, we brothers have been somewhat divided. Snow’s command was in question. Some might argue his death was for the better.”

“I’m sure _some_ would.” Massey deadpanned. Despite himself Satin almost laughed. He was starting to like the wrongway ranger, even if he was a queen’s man. Massey looked back to the red priestess “What will be done with his body? I mean to read that letter, and send it to his grace. So mayhaps we might fish him out of the ice cells before spring?”

“As for his body, there was power in Jon snow; the fires were drawn to him. I felt it.”

“And you’ll say he had king’s blood as well I expect.” The septon spoke up. Perhaps he was drunker than Satin had thought. Somehow he seemed to have acquired another cupfull of wine, and it had made him bold. “He should not be burned! It does not befit a Lord Commander.” He spoke a bit too loudly for Satin’s comfort. Ser Godry’s look was dark, and his hand rested too meaningfully on his sword hilt. 

_I should have asked them to disarm when they entered, it would have seemed natural. Men hand over their swords to stewards when they enter halls._ The last thing they needed was for violence to break out in the hall. The free folk were already casting uneasy glances at the queen and king’s men. There had been none in the shield hall since Wun Wun killed ser Patrek and the peace was broken.

“Would you have him buried with a crystal on his headstone instead?” Said Othell Yarwyck. “He was no devotee of the seven. He said his words beyond the wall in the weirwood grove.”

Septon Cellador Raised his eyebrows and took another sip. _He’d let him rot in the ice cells. He loved Snow no more than Bowen Marsh did,_ Satin thought vindictively, _you’d be in the queen’s tower with your friends, septon, were that where they kept the wine barrels._

Tormund Giantsbane rubbed a spot on his arm where, Satin knew, gold bands had once sat. “Let him burn.” There was no malice in his voice, it was matter of fact, solemn even. “Snow’s gods are the same as ours. A corpse is a corpse, her fires or ours, it’s better to burn.” 

Satin shivered, and was sure several others did too. _Better to burn than to come back with cold black hands and starry blue eyes._

The priestess smiled. “There will be no moon tomorrow night. It would be well to keep the dark at bay with a pyre.”

“Aren’t there crypts at Winterfell? For the bones of Starks?” The words were out of Satin’s mouth before he could stop himself from saying them. Jon Snow had said something about crypts once, he was sure.

“No. No. Not the crypts.”

Of all people, it was Theon Greyjoy who said it, still lying on the table between the two prisoners who had held him down as he struggled. He’d turned on his side, his sunken eyes were haunted, looking right at Satin.

“Not the crypts for Snow, only Starks down there.” He hiccuped half a giggle and showed Satin a ghoulish grin with his teeth all jagged splinters. “The Stone kings would not smile to see him.” 

“A fine gift for Lady Arya. Her brother’s black bastard bones,” snickered one of the prisoners, the one with rotten teeth. His friend grunted a laugh.

“Does anyone _else_ have a suggestion for what to do with Lord Snow’s corpse?” Justin Massey said. “Perhaps we should write the Dornish. I hear they have something exciting with boats.” 

Satin chewed his lip. _I should not have spoken._ But it felt wrong to simply burn his body. It would have been nice to think he could lay to rest with his family. Was his brother King Robb in those crypts? His father? _I could have asked, he might have told me, there were so many things I could have asked him._

Again, his mouth seemed to start without his permission. “Did he have a will?” he asked. 

That got looks of incredulity all around. Massey and Farring even glanced at each other in mutual disbelief. But Othell Yarwyck stroked his beard thoughtfully. “He did have reason to fear for his life, and intended to leave for a battle. It’s not unheard of. Lord Commander Qorgyle wrote a will when his health began to fail. His wishes for a worthy successor may have gotten Mormont the position, and he had his sword sent back to Sandstone with his bones.” 

“I was his steward, ser, I know where he kept his papers. Perhaps there was a will.” 

“Fine.” Ser justin waved a dismissive hand at him. “It would not do to upset Lady Arya by mishandling her brother’s remains. We can at the very least say we made an attempt.”

Satin looked at Lady Melisandre. She did not frown, but her red gaze made the back of his neck prickle with heat. 

“Very well,” she said, “Jon Snow’s wishes should be honored, he was a friend to the king, and to the Lord of Light.”

* * *

Too late, Satin wished he had thought to ask Tall Toregg, or Arron, or Leathers to come with him. As a brother of the watch, he could go anywhere he wanted in the castle, no queen’s man or wildling had the right to accost him in the yard. But being on no one’s side was not the same as being safe anywhere in the castle. Horse, or Mully, Othell Yarwyck, Septon Cellador, Clydas, Arron or Emrick, even little club footed Hop-Robin could walk freely in either camp. But Satin had been little liked even before he was Jon Snow’s steward, and worse, more than once he had stood watch in the free folk’s barricade against the king’s tower. He may have made a few friends, but he still felt many unfriendly gazes on him whenever he walked without company.

Besides that, men had been turning up dead in the night, and not killed by sword or knife.

He pulled his cloak more closely around him. It was cold, the wind shearing sharply off the wall from the west. Castle Black was shielded from the frigid north winds by the bulk of the wall, but nothing could prevent cold fronts from the distant bay of ice from catching on its southern face and blowing right through. A year on the wall had not made it any less miserable to feel his face sting in the icy gusts.

It was not far to the armory, though, nestled between the training yard and the old stables. He was just approaching the door when a black shape loomed up from the shadows. Satin quailed. _It's Alf come to skin me for true this time!_ but when a hand grabbed his arm hard and yanked him around to face a big man with small piggy eyes and a bristle of stubble, he recognized Borroq. 

Satin didn’t see his boar anywhere, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t lurking. The free folk said he was a skinchanger. Satin had never believed in wargs or grumkins or anything but the few quick prayers to the mother and maiden his own mother had taught him, but tonight, with the cold wind blowing and only the barest crescent of moon in the sky, he almost could. 

Satin could hear his own heart racing. Borroq had had no love for Jon Snow, and likely little and less for his former squire. 

“Business in the armory?” the big man asked, his grip on Satin’s arm firm but not painful. There was no malice in his eyes, only suspicion. _He does not know me._

“I- I was-,” Satin stammered. He had a knife, but not where he could reach it without being stopped.

“Out so late? And all alone...” His eyes narrowed, studying Satin’s face for some deceit. “Little crows would do well not to walk alone at night. Someone might get suspicious.” The grip on his arm tightened. “What are you up to? Stealing food? Sneaking around? Meeting someone? Meeting _Something?_ ” 

“Papers!” he blurted, “they bade me collect lord Snow’s papers from his chamber.” 

“They?” 

“Tormund, and the red woman, and ser Justin Massey. They-” He caught his breath, swallowed hard, he did not owe this man any explanation. “I’m a man of the watch, my business in the armory is no concern of yours.”

Borroq gave him a long measuring look, then cast around, as though whoever Satin might be meeting in secret would simply appear. When no conspirator produced themself from the darkness, he seemed to make up his mind. He smirked and let Satin’s arm go. “As you please. But be mindful, _man of the watch_. Were I you, I’d go nowhere on my lonesome. There’s wolves about.”

With that he stalked away, back the way he had come, disappearing into the night beyond the old stables.

Satin rubbed at his arm, watching him go, and remembering. They’d found Wick Wittlestick not a dozen yards into the woods, his throat torn out, frozen blood all around him in the snow, but there had been half a foot of fresh snowfall that night, and no tracks to or from the body could be made out. _It could have been a bear. It might have been any wolf, even a shadowcat._

Satin pushed the image from his mind, Wick Wittlestick had been no friend of his, nor Borroq the boar’s. _What reason does he have to fear? Why does he care who comes and goes at night?_

He tried the armory door, but it would not budge. Of course, no one had been through it since the night everything had fallen apart. They’d had six feet of snow at least since then. The wind might have blown the bulk of it away, against the wall, but the door was frozen shut. Soon they’d have to use the wormways to get anywhere at all. 

He braced his feet, and put his weight into it, driving his shoulder into the solid wood. He succeeded in bruising his shoulder. Cursing, he braced himself again, and then froze. He heard footfall somewhere in the dark. Had Borroq decided not to leave him to his business after all? 

Satin glanced around but saw nobody. Unnerved, he tried the door again, but it still refused to budge. He could have sworn he heard another crunch in the snow behind him, but looking around again, only saw the empty training yard, lit by the sliver of moon that would soon disappear below the treeline. 

It might have been the pounding of his heart, but he thought he saw movement in the shadows at the edge of the yard. _Wick never even drew his sword. Whatever killed him killed him fast and silent, he never saw it coming._

Suddenly frantic to be inside, he grabbed the door handle again, sure that if he turned to look, something would be racing toward him across the yard. Hungry fangs and mad red eyes on silent white paws. He squeezed his eyes shut and yanked the latch down one more time, he heard the metal scrape, and could almost feel hot breath on the back of his neck. He wasted not a heartbeat in slamming his full weight against the door. The ice gave. He burst through in a flurry of snow and fell to the familiar, hard packed dirt of the armory floor. 

Nothing landed on his back. No fangs dug into his neck to snap his spine. He scrambled onto his back; nothing stood in the doorway. Only the night and the wind and his racing heart.

Feeling stupid, he got up and slammed the door shut before more snow could blow in, throwing the latch. He finally exhaled and leaned his back against the heavy oak of it. 

The armory was dark and cold. No one had lit the forge in weeks. Armor and dull training swords hung undisturbed from their hooks. It was strange to be back. In the long moons between when the great ranging departed and when the survivors came straggling back to the wall, he had often found refuge here. Donal Noye, the one armed blacksmith, had always been kind to him. Pyp, and Toad and Halder at the little ranger's urging had kept an eye out, but they could not be his constant protectors, and the days he’d gotten to pump the bellows or hone blades under the eye of the gruff stormlander had been some of the best. Noye never spoke him gently, but he had never been cruel, chuckling good-naturedly as his hands blistered and then turned all to callouses, and once he’d struck one of the builders hard across the jaw for backing Satin into a corner and asking how he got his name. Noye might have only had the one arm, but it was corded with muscles as thick as any man’s thigh, and hard as steel. For a fortnight after that, the builder had had to live on gruel and ale thickened with flour rather than chew his food. 

When Jon Snow had made the smithy his quarters, it had not felt so different, it was still warm and safe inside then, but now it was hollow and silent. Satin would wager that he had been the last man in this room. It had been his own hand that latched the door shut that night before he chased after Ghost, who had all but bowled him over when he came bursting out of the Lord Commander’s room when Satin opened it to his scratching. 

He took a deep breath and pressed on, into the forge, past the anvil where the wolf would often lay napping, to the door of the Lord Commander’s chamber. 

The moment it was open, a great flurry of claws and feathers came flapping straight at his head.

Satin yelped and threw his hands up to cover his face. He’d forgotten all about the damned raven.

It flapped around him, pecking at his hands and shoulders with its beak as long and sharp as a knife. 

“Corn!” it said in its deep raspy voice, “corn!” before fluttering away to land heavily on the desk, scattering papers and corn kernels. 

“Seven hells, have you been trapped in here all this time?” There was corn everywhere. On the desk, all over the floor, even as far as the cold grate, mixed with the ashes. The bag of dried kernels that had hung by the door, which Satin had oft seen Snow reach into to feed a few to the bird was torn to ribbons, through the doorway to the bedroom, he could see the pillow was too, and what parts of the straw stuffed mattress had not been covered in furs.

“Corn.” it said again, and hopped across the desk toward him.

Satin made shooing motions with his hands and swept some kernels off the desk. The papers were in complete disarray, some had fallen to the floor, but all that he remembered were there. 

“Snow,” said the bird. Satin let himself imagine it was a question.

“Sorry, he’s not here anymore.” He pulled his right glove off and reached out to preen its chest with his finger.

It shied away, hopping back to the far side of the desk, kicking another paper to the floor in the process. “Snow. Snow. Snow!”

Satin smiled. “I miss him too.” 

He set about getting the papers in order. He could not read the words, but he knew what a letter looked like, and could tell it from a ledger. He doubted a will would have so many numbers and sums on it. 

Jon Snow had said he’d teach Satin to read, when he had the time. He’d been surprised to hear he couldn't, having asked him offhand what he thought of a note from Edd Tolett, and flushing at his own presumption when Satin sheepishly handed the parchment back. 

“Forgive me, Satin. I did not mean to assume.” He seemed truly contrite, and, for an instant more the boy of sixteen, and less the Lord Commander.

Satin tried to explain it to him, about how you learned a lot of things in a brothel, like playing the harp, or cyvasse, or cheating at cards, and doing basic sums that you didn’t need to write down, but a literate whore could keep track of complicated debts and interest, and that was no good for the master of the brothel who needed them always to owe him more and more, but, to Satin’s amusement, Snow had grown more flustered by the moment, more muddled than he had ever seen him, and eventually just blurted that he’d teach him himself. 

“You’re my steward, consider it one of your duties, you’ll learn your letters so you can go through some of these wretched ledgers and I don’t have to.” And that had been that. 

Somehow, there never seemed to be time to actually start the lessons. 

Aside from knowing a talley of turnips from orders to be sent to the commander of a garrison, or a letter to the king, He knew the Lord Commander's hand from Bowen Marsh’s. All those in the lord steward’s neat loops and crisp figures he set aside, but the rest went into the pile. Let Justin Massey and Othell Yarwyck pore over them at their leisure where it was warm. 

A thought occurred to him, and he checked in the chest at the foot of the bed, and then beneath the mattress, running his hand under each of the four edges, then, to his surprise, half beneath the tattered pillow, he found something. 

It was a letter that had arrived by raven, judging by how it was folded and rolled. The seal was cracked, it had been a neat circle of pink wax with what looked in the dim light to be a man on it, and one end of it was singed, as though it had accidentally been held too close to the candle and hastily put out before it fully caught. _Or someone tried to burn it, and then changed their mind_.

When he unrolled it, he saw that it was written in multiple hands, the main body was neat and orderly, then several different people had signed it, and at the bottom, there was a great spiky mass of a signature. When he brushed a thumb across the trailing tail of one of the letters, the ink flaked away leaving a brownish powder on his skin. His stomach turned over with the realization, _it’s written in blood._

* * *

Mormont’s raven quarked happily, tearing into a scrap of rabbit liver and making a bloody mess on the floor, apparently having spent all its Snows and Corns on the walk back from the armory to the shield hall. 

Satin liked having the bird back, it was like an old friend had returned, some part of the world that had been destroyed with Jon Snow's death, restored. The raven seemed to like him too, hopping back to his knee or his shoulder every time it finished a morsel of meat to croak at him or nibble at his clothes. 

There were still ravens in the rookery above the maester’s tower and some of them could say a word or two, but this bird had been Jon’s, and he hadn’t quite realized it before, but he’d missed the cantankerous old beast, even if he owed its beak more than a few scars.

He had dutifully given over his stack of papers to Othell Yarwyck to sort through, and Sers Justin and Godry, and the lady Melisandre, as well as Tormund giansbane had gone off, presumably to bargain with the queen for peace, and Jon Snow’s body. He’d kept the letter he found though. That was safe inside his jerkin.

Warm and tucked away in a corner of the shield hall, with a pewter mug of hot mulled wine, _with cloves even!_ and one of the bed furs from the Lord Commander's chamber, which he had pilfered for a second cloak, wrapped around him, he could almost forget what had happened in the practice yard. _Let Borroq skulk around in the dark, suspicious of all comers. He is a grouchy wildling with no friends but a great ugly boar._

He leaned over to Tall Toregg. “Do birds go grey with age?” 

“What?” said Toregg, who was wrangling his little brother Dryn, a task which mostly consisted of letting the boy gnaw on his forearm to keep him in his lap, instead of letting him run around disturbing their father’s and Soren Shieldbreaker's men, or any of the nearly forty other hostage children, who were trying to sleep. Dryn was a boy of ten, but, rambunctious as a puppy, he often preferred to bite his problems rather than reason with them.

“Birds.” Satin gestured at the raven. “Do their feathers turn grey when they get old? This one’s outlived two Lord Commanders, three even, if he was Qorgyle’s before he was Mormont’s. I wonder, will he go grey before he outlives the next?”

That puzzled both of Tormund’s sons enough for Dryn to sit still and stop trying to bite his brother. 

“Saw a grouse once that went all white in two days,” said Dryn.

Toregg rolled his eyes. “That was a ptarmigan. And it took a fortnight. They do that every time the seasons change.” He gave Satin a cheeky grin. “Once I saw a black crow turn grey in an instant when he got one look at my axe!”

Laughing, Satin dipped a finger in his wine and flicked a droplet at Toregg. “You never raised your axe at a brother.”

“I did too! I killed sixty! Six hundred black crows in my time.” 

While Toregg was distracted, Dryn managed to wriggle free and vanish under the nearest table. 

As Toregg, sighing, got up to chase him down, Satin heard Clydas call out. “Satin, lad, your eyes are sharper than mine, and hands steadier, will you come here a moment?”

The old steward was still over where the prisoners from winterfell were huddled together. They'd been cut free, and the two king's men were keeping a relaxed watch on them. None of them had seemed very inclined to try an escape out into the cold.

Reluctant to move from his comfortable niche, Satin dawdled over another sip from his mug, but Clydas had never given him cause to dislike him, and seeing as things would soon be back in proper order, with Jon Snow burned or buried or sent back to Winterfell, and doubtless a new Lord Commander put in place, he decided he had best defer to senior stewards. He had few enough friends as it was. 

The short round man was manipulating the arm that hung limp at Theon Greyjoy’s side. 

Greyjoy, the man who had seemed, cackling and thrashing on the table, to be a horror of long skinny limbs and broken teeth, now, sitting up, was small and unassuming with slumped shoulders and dull, sunken eyes that hid behind his mop of scraggly grey hair. He barely raised his gaze to look at either of them. 

“Put your hand here,” said Clydas, gesturing to Greyjoy’s shoulder. 

Satin hesitated, and glanced at the old steward. “Clydas, this man…,” 

“I know who he is.” Clydas turned his pink eyes on Satin. He was not Maester Aemon, to always find the wisest, kindest way to say something. “Lord Commander snow ordered me to tend the wounded in the shield hall. Would you have me disobey one of his last orders? Brace your hand on his shoulder so I can put it to rights.”

 _He is not like to live out the week!_ Satin might have argued. Ser Justin had said there was no reason to keep him alive, and he was half starved and delirious with fever anyway. Satin was loath to touch him, filthy and smelling of the road and worse as he was, but he did as he was told, if huffily. He put his hand on Greyjoy’s shoulder where it met his chest. He felt the man flinch from his touch, but still he did not raise his eyes from where they looked vaguely at his own knees, rather than at the stewards. 

Clydas continued to explain. “The arm is not broken, his shoulder has been dislocated, the bone is out of joint. But it will still need to be set, or never heal properly.”

With his hand on the injured joint, Satin could feel how it was deformed. He could not have said how a shoulder was meant to be, but he was certain that was not it.

“How long has it been like this?” asked Clydas.

It took a moment for Greyjoy to realize the question was addressed to him. When he did, he glanced up briefly. “Days. Perhaps a fortnight.” He looked away again, rubbing idly at his wrist, where the skin was chafed raw from steel manacles, “I hung from the tower wall. Six feet up, before the battle.” 

Clydas made a humm of disapproval. “The swelling may be too much, and there may be damage to the muscles, but it will never get better on its own. Would that we had a maester! Hold him steady, lad.”

Satin held him steady.

Clydas did something with the arm, moving it forward and up slowly. Greyjoy shuddered under Satin’s hands, but made no noise but jagged breaths. There was a scraping sensation, and a distinct pop, and Greyjoy let out a yelp. But then, simple as that, his shoulder was no longer so horrible and misshapen. Clydas bent the arm at the elbow and pressed it close to his chest. 

“Some fabric, for a sling.”

“Cloak,” Greyjoy whispered, eyes closed, tears streaming from their corners.

Despite himself, Satin felt a stab of pity. He was a pitiable creature. Even if he had killed Jon Snow’s brothers and burned his castle down

“Satin, his cloak.” Both of Clydas’ hands were occupied in holding the arm.

The cloak Greyjoy wore was good grey wool. They might yet dye it black and put it with the rest of their stores of clothing, but it could stand to be a few inches shorter. He drew out his knife and cut a long strip from its hem.

Clydas explained how to tie it round the wrist and elbow and neck so it kept the arm in place and Satin did his best.

By the time he was done, Theon Greyjoy had finally opened his eyes and raised his head. He looked from Clydas, to Satin, then down to his arm as though baffled by all of his circumstances. He opened and closed the fingers once or twice, and let out one of those hiccuping giggles. 

“There is a maester,” he said, like it was funny, “Tybald, Stannis sent him with the prisoners, he doesn’t kill men for keeping their oaths.” 

Having served wine and lemon water in Lord Commander Snow and King Stannis' councils many times, Satin could almost hear it in the man’s own voice. He might have laughed.

They left the ragged prisoner with another bowl of hot broth and some mulled wine. There was dreamwine and milk of the poppy up in Clydas’ chamber in the maester’s tower, but it was cold, and dangerous outside, and besides, why waste the precious medicines on a dead man? Clydas went instead to speak with the Bolton maester. They had all mistaken his grey robe for simple traveling clothes, none had looked too closely at the band of mismatched folk from Winterfell. 

Satin, free to return to his corner, found that Toregg and Dryn had left him for their own bedrolls, and his wine had gone tepid. The cloves, that had been so fine and pungent when it was hot, now seemed too bitter.

It would not be long now until dawn, and he resigned himself to a few uneasy hours of sleep right there. It was safer in the hall than to sleep alone in a cell in Hardin’s tower. He bundled himself in the skin he had stolen off the Lord Commander’s bed, pressing his face into the soft fur of it. If he closed his eyes he could almost imagine it still smelled like Jon, or Ghost.


	3. Theon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Owen the oaf makes an unfortunate discovery, Theon meets an old friend in the woods, and is brought before the queen.

The porridge was thin, made with water, not milk, and without a trace of honey to sweeten it, or pepper and salt, with a bit of butter, and a slice or two of bacon on top, as Gage might have made at Winterfell. But it was hot, and soft enough not to trouble his teeth, and Theon bolted it down before anyone could think to take it away from him. 

His stomach had kept him up through the last few dark quiet hours until dawn. Whetted by the broth they’d given him, it had gotten ambitious notions, and begun to demand food again. Curled beneath a bench, he’d been wracked with hunger pangs and terrified that someone would hear the growling. But none had disturbed him, or even noticed where he’d secreted himself away. Not even Alyn and Grunt, who he had not dared to close his eyes for fear of, and the other men from Winterfell. Among them were Karstarks, Ryswells, Dustins, Cerwyns, all only grudging friends of Bolton, all with enough reason to slit Theon’s throat for him, for Bran and Rickon, for Robb, or even just for being Ramsay’s creature. He had no reason to fear the wildlings, but the black brothers… He’d felt more than a few unfriendly eyes upon him once his name had been said aloud. _More than a few of them good northmen no doubt, and Lord Eddard was a friend to the watch, they’ve no reason to love the man who slew his sons._ They’d elected his bastard to command them, after all, hadn’t they? 

When his bowl was empty, he dragged the spoon around, scraping up as much of the remains of the porridge as he could. 

The black brother that had served it to him out of a great steaming cauldron had not looked twice, filling his bowl as readily as he did anyone else in line, but he dared not try for a second helping, even if he was given it, he would likely only make himself sick. 

He was considering doing it anyway, and damn the consequences if he ended up retching on the floor, but had not quite committed to the ordeal of getting himself up onto his feet again —his legs were weak and tremulous, but they had held his weight when the smell of food and the sound of men breaking their fast had gotten him out from his hiding place— when Othell Yarwyck entered the hall in a bustle of men. Six or so of them were black brothers and a few were southron knights in plate and colorful surcoats, all of them armed and looking around them, wary of the wildlings. 

The First Builder began to rattle off commands immediately. “Mully, I’ve orders from the Lord Steward for you. Arron, you as well. quit loafing. You’re to take the recruits to the barracks and let them choose cells.” A man with curly orange hair was on his feet readily, one of a pair of blond young men from a different table, brothers by the look of them, came more reluctantly. “Owen,” Yarwyck turned to a tall man at a different table still, “you go to the laundry, get them their blacks. No, leave the porridge, you can have some more when you get back.” 

“Yes m’lord,” the man mumbled, looking despondent at his half full bowl before setting it back down for his tablemates to have at. 

Theon wavered in his seat. _Am I a recruit?_ But before he could even start to stand, the first builder’s hand landed next to his empty bowl, making it jump on the table. “Not you, Greyjoy, The queen wants to see you. You there, Steward, bind his hands.”

“My lord?” said the man he had gestured to.

Theon recognized Satin, the one with the crossbow from the trench, that had made all the fuss about Jon Snow’s body and then helped Clydas do whatever he had done to fix Theon’s shoulder. He blinked blearily, and seemed surprised to be addressed at all by anyone, let alone the First Builder. 

“Did I speak unclearly? Bind his hands, he’s to be taken to the queen.”

“Yes, my lord.” He ran a hand through his tumble of black curls, mouth twisting uncertainly. “Only, I meant to ask. Did you find one? A will I mean.” 

That got him a glare “No. There was no will. Snow’s to be burned at sundown like the red woman wanted.”

Satin frowned.

 _No will. I could have told him that_ . There would be no list left behind of things Jon Snow wanted. Not Stark’s moody bastard, who’d made such a show of packing himself off to a frozen hell where you swore to father no children and hold no lands or titles. He might as well have stood atop the great keep at Winterfell and shouted, _Look at me! I never wanted anything! I never dared to covet my father’s name or my brother’s birthright! Never! See! See?_

Yarwyck’s gaze softened, just slightly, Theon knew the look. If he were Lord Eddard, he would have put a fatherly hand on Satin’s shoulder. But he wasn’t, and he didn’t. “Were I you, I’d stop talking about him, lad. Sooner we all forget his name, the better. Best not to remind the brothers that you were his…,” 

“His steward, my lord, and squire.” Satin bit each word off sharply, meeting the gaze with flinty reproach. He grabbed Theon’s wrist, sending a shock of pain up through his injured shoulder, and turning away from the first Builder without waiting to be dismissed. 

Yarwyck only shrugged and turned back to giving his orders, sending builders out to start flattening walls and filling trenches. 

While he sat obediently for his wrists to be bound, Theon kept his gaze on his gloved hands, only studying Satin from the corner of his eye. It was not hard to extrapolate what Othell Yarwyck had been implying about the nature of Satin’s stewardship of his Lord Commander. _Was it like that with Snow then?_ He’d had his suspicions. A boy could protest all he liked about never wanting a bastard of his own, but even Robb had had his moments, his eye straying to a pretty maid now and then, if she walked by with her kirtle hiked above the knee. Theon had never caught Jon Snow staring, nor ever seen him flirt with one of the kitchen girls, however willing they had made it clear they were with their dawdling around the practice yard whenever Lord Eddard’s sons happened to be sparring. 

“Come on, Turncloak,” Satin said.

He gave him a crooked broken toothed smile, to show him how much he liked being called something other than his name. 

To his credit, the steward didn’t quail from the sight, but he did look uncomfortable as he helped Theon to his feet. 

Before they could make it to the door though, they were stopped by Clydas. 

“Theon, that’s your name yes?” the old steward asked, standing between them and the door. In the light of day he was even shorter and rounder and paler than Theon remembered him. 

“I-. Yes. Theon. I’m Theon.” He was caught off guard, he hadn’t expected to be addressed directly. 

“How is your shoulder?” 

He shrugged. It still ached, but not with the throbbing, sickening pain that had plagued him since the tower in the crofter’s village. He could make a fist now, and had carried his bowl with both hands, steadily enough not to spill his porridge. “...Better?” 

“Good, that’s good. You should rest it for at least a week, or longer if you can.” 

Theon could only nod dumbly in response. _I doubt I’ll live that long, steward._

Clydas turned to Satin then. “You’re going to the king’s tower?”

Satin nodded. 

“And if you see Lew or Alf. You don’t do anything stupid. Bowen Marsh is still your commander, and they are still your brothers, boy.”

Satin’s grip on Theon’s arm tightened. “If I see Alf, or Left Hand Lew, I’ll be just as smart as they are when they see me.” His other hand strayed to the hilt of a knife. “Kegs, Fulk, any of them.” With that he pushed past Clydas.

The old steward let them go without arguing further but looked after them with his brow furrowed in worry.

They did not get ten paces out past the low snow wall, before Theon glanced back at the shield hall and stumbled. If not for Satin’s grip on his sleeve, he would have fallen flat on his face in shock. 

What, the night before, he had taken to be a pile of firewood and snow, or debris from the roof, had shaken itself off and sat up, and, gods help him, was having an amiable chat with one of the brothers while it munched on a pumpkin.

A giant. It was a real giant. Living, breathing, out of one of old Nan’s stories. Even sitting, its shaggy head was level with the low edge of the Shield Hall's roof. Standing, it would have been twelve, even fifteen feet of thick fur and leathery skin. 

The watchman said something and it held out one of it’s huge hands for him to inspect a bandage wrapped around its arm, docile as a sheep. Theon gawked. 

Satin actually laughed at him, his ill-humor from Clydas' warning evaporating into clear, untroubled laughter. He gave Theon's good shoulder a genial pat. “It’s just Wun Wun.”

“ _Just_ Wun Wun,” Theon echoed. Its name was Wun Wun. 

He had heard them talk about a giant killing one of the queen’s men, but it had never quite struck him that he would _see_ one. 

The steward gave his sleeve a gentle tug. “He’s no good with strangers, and we’d best get going anyway, the queen doesn’t like to wait.”

They took the long way around the castle to get to the king’s tower, the trenches and walls between it and the shield hall made a direct line difficult to walk, and impossible for Theon, with his poor balance and weak legs. 

Satin was silent for the most part, nodding greetings at a few black brothers as they passed, or avoiding the eyes of others. Theon was fascinated by the wall. It was a bright morning, cloudless and cold, and the vast expanse of ice sparkled like a septon’s crystal. Nothing so cruel and cold had ever been so lovely. 

They had passed what looked and smelled like a stable, and were about to turn in the shadow of a leaning, decrepit tower, when the clean, windy silence was broken by the sound of a man screaming. 

Satin stopped in his tracks, making Theon teeter and almost fall once again. “That’s Owen the oaf...” he said, breathless. His eyes were wide and scared. 

He started toward the sound, then looked at back at Theon uncertainly. He glanced toward the king’s tower and chewed his lip for a moment. 

“Hells,” he said under his breath, and yanked Theon along with him down the narrow path that went alongside the stables. He had no choice but to try to keep up, tripping and stumbling along after the steward. A big basket full of black clothing lay upended on the path. Looking back at it as they passed, Theon saw two other men in black following, also drawn by the screaming.

As they drew near, the sounds of distress became clearer, resolved into wailing and sobbing. Then Owen came into view. Satin let go of Theon to rush over to him.

The big man was kneeling in the snow a few yards away from the edge of the woods, crying. Beside him was a corpse. 

He looked up, eyes streaming, “Satin! Oh Satin he’s dead! It’s Lew,” he wailed, and threw his arms around the steward’s knees, sobbing into the front of his jerkin.

The two men caught up with them, Theon knew them, Alden and Gerret. They must have been on their way to the hall from wherever the two of them had spent the night. Gerret had an armful of snow and black fabric. Alden held the basket, but he handed it to his companion when he saw the body and moved closer to get a better look.

The dead man lay on his side in a frozen pool of blood. What was left of his neck was twisted nearly all the way around, more gristle and exposed bone than flesh. A dagger lay where it had fallen, a few inches from his left hand, Theon was glad he could not see his face.

The little watchman crouched by the body’s head. He made a face. “Left Hand Lew and no mistaking it.” 

“What did this?” Gerret asked, putting the basket down.

Alden looked the body over. “A wolf, I’d say, Shadowcat would have clawed him up more, and a bear would have taken his head clear off. But… Never knew a wolf to kill and not eat what it felled or drag it away for its pack, unless something scared it off." He was as familiar with the beasts of the northern wood as anyone could be. He’d been a crofter’s son and a woodsman for half his life, and a forester with the watch for the other. "Don't make sense though. Out in the open... Lew weren't injured were he?”

Satin shook his head.

"A wolf might dart out o' the woods for Hop-Robin, but a man in his prime? And armed?" 

Theon had seen wolves kill men in their prime before, he remembered squint's corpse where it had floated in the moat, his guts all bloated and drifting like worms after the rain, he remembered the man who had tried to kill Bran, and Summer only a lanky puppy when he'd done it without sign or order from Lady Catelyn.

Alden gestured to the dagger. “Look here, no blood on the blade. He never landed a blow. It got him from behind, see?” He pointed at the man’s ruined throat, indicating how the direction of the horrible wounds showed where jaws had closed on it, broken his neck, and then torn backwards, ripping the flesh from his spine. 

“Poor Lew!” Owen, who had collected himself into mere sniffles, broke out sobbing once again. 

Satin looked as though he might be sick. “Poor Lew,” he echoed. Then to Alden, “how long has he been here?” 

Alden poked the dead man’s face, frowned, pulled off a glove and stuck the hand under his clothing. “Frozen solid as week-old shit.” He withdrew his hand, there was no blood on it, but he wiped it on his hip anyway before drawing the glove back on. “Lot of heat in a man, and him wearing heavy furs, it would go out slowly, even in this cold. He’s been like this for hours. Wouldn’t shock me none if he were dead before we arrived last night.” 

Several more men were coming down the path now, all curious to see what the commotion was about. Theon edged away from the growing crowd, and none paid him any mind. Left Hand Lew was a good deal more interesting than he was.

Something fluttering by the treeline caught his eye.

A bird. A raven. 

He got glimpse of black feathers as it vanished behind a tree, only to reappear further away. 

He took an unsteady step toward it, then glanced back at the small crowd. Nobody stopped him. All were distracted with the body. 

He saw the raven flit between two branches, just a little further into the woods. He took another step, again nobody stopped him. He followed the bird.

Soon he couldn’t see the men and the body anymore, or the shape of the stables and armory. He'd lost sight of the raven, but something compelled him to keep walking. All around him was trees and snow. On the journey north, he had heard Ramsay's hounds echoing through the wolfswood, always chasing him, but now the wood was silent.

And then he saw the wolf. 

He might have missed it, pure white and in the shadows of the underbrush, but there was no mistaking those red eyes looking right at him. _I mocked Jon Snow, said it would surely die, the runt of the litter and an albino no less._

It stared, and he was transfixed in its red gaze. _Those jaws could close all the way around my throat, and I'm no man in my prime, no man at all._ His knees hit the ground almost without him noticing his legs giving out. He barely felt it, the snow cushioning the fall. He could not look away from the wolf.

It moved silently closer, bigger than ever he remembered Grey Wind growing, towering over him where he knelt. He held out his gloved hands, wrists bound together and awkward with the left arm in a sling, moving as if in a dream. 

The wolf did not blink, its eyes bored into him, into the core of him, like the Winterfell heart tree, like the tree on the island in the crofter’s village, _Theon,_ they seemed to say.

“I know you,” he whispered, “I know your name.”

It never opened its jaws to bite, instead the big white head dipped, and made to sniff his trembling fingertips.

“Snow!” screamed the raven, swooping overhead. Theon jerked his hands back from where he had almost touched the pink nose, and the wolf started, turned away, and vanished into the brush. 

Only then did he hear the crunching of boots from behind him. “Over here! I found him!” called Satin’s voice. “He didn’t get far!” 

Theon didn’t turn to look, but he heard him cross the clearing, and stop once he reached his side to peer into the woods where Theon was staring. If he noticed a pawprint in the snow, he made no sign. Had Theon really seen the wolf at all? _Am I going mad?_

“You know, you’d freeze to death long before you starved, if you run.”

“I thought I saw something,” was all he could think of to reply with, running had not crossed his mind. He held his bound hands out to be grabbed, and satin helped him back up. 

“Come on, my orders are to take you to the queen.” 

_To the red woman more like._ Theon smiled “She means to burn me.” He had been a prince. Good king's blood flowed in his veins. _She'll want that for her red God._

“She probably does,” said Satin. 

* * *

There were few smiles in the chamber where the Queen took her breakfast. The short, balding man in black at table with her looked rather the worse for wear. A haggard man with the Karstark sunburst emblazoned on his chest looked despondent, and there had been the sound of someone crying in a room they passed on the way up the stairs. Even ser Justin, who Stannis had called the smiler, and always seemed to have a jest or a genial remark was serious and sober. The red woman, the skinny brown haired boy who sat on the other side of her, all were less than happy. The only bit of joy in the room, it seemed, came from a small girl at the end of the table with a horrible scarred face. She had been humming happily when they entered, though she went quiet and wide-eyed to watch when everyone turned to look at them.

“You are Lord Theon Greyjoy?” the queen asked over her breakfast, eyebrows raised. Theon knew she was the queen by her crown. Gold, with flames wrought on the points of its spikes, like Stannis’.

“Lord, M’lady?” he couldn’t help but ask. Roose Bolton had dressed him as a lord for the wedding, and had made pretenses at restoring him to his father’s seat, but it was all a farce and they had both known it.

She sniffed, making a face as though smelling something distasteful. It occurred to Theon that it was him. He had not bathed since… since the last time Ramsay had bade him wash. 

“ _Your Grace_ is how one addresses the queen.” She sniffed again. “You are Balon’s only surviving son, yes?” 

He nodded.

“And your father is no longer alive. Making you the rightful lord of the Iron Islands.” 

He shook his head. “Beg pardon, M’–, your grace, but Balon was king, and now my uncle Euron rules. I’m no lord.”

“Very well, just Theon Greyjoy then.” She raised a piece of bread, spread with butter, to take a delicate bite.

“My queen, if I may—,” tried Massey, but she silenced him with a look. 

The queen was not beautiful, not as Cersei had been when he saw her at Winterfell. Selyse had a pinched, unlovely face, and cold, unhappy eyes, as well as a wispy mustache. Once, he might have turned to Satin with a smirk and made a jape at her expense, something about how he’d fuck her anyway, but only from behind. But now, looking at her, his thoughts turned to another queen, his mother. 

_Gods, I never stopped to see her. She was only on Harlaw, less than a half day’s sail away. I might have gone in an afternoon, but I never did._

She was queen as well, but Theon could not have said if she had been beautiful when he was nine, or how she looked at present, if he would even know her by sight. _Would she know me now? What would she think of me, if she saw what had become of her son?_

The last time he saw her, she had wept, hugging him and asha to her when the door to her chambers had come splintering open under the axe of some knight, and wept when they took him before King Robert, wept and wept until she was out of sight as they bore him away, down from Pyke to lordsport, to the waiting ships. He remembered the sound of her sobbing, but try as he might he could not conjure her face into his mind’s eye. 

“Thank you for bringing him, Satin. We have no more need of you,” said Melisandre, not unkindly. “Please give Othell Yarwyck my thanks, and that of the queen.” 

“My lady.” Satin let go of him and bowed. Their eyes met for a moment as he turned, but Theon could not have said if the look he gave was one of sympathy, indifference, or disgust. When the steward was gone he felt exposed and alone, unbalanced on his maimed feet without the steadying grip on his sleeve. All eyes in the room were on him. 

He felt a giggling fit rising in the back of his throat and tried to swallow it down. He fidgeted with the bindings on his wrists, and the knot that held the sling together, looking at the floor. 

“You freely admit that you are disinherited from your lordship?” the queen continued.

Theon nodded again. _What do they want of me? If I’m to die then kill me! What use are questions you already know the answers to?_

“It’s as I said your grace.” Massey again. “The way to the islands is through the sister. He is no use to us. Half the realm would like to see him dead, the other already believes him to be. Let him take the black, and be out of the matter for good.”

“Thank you, ser Justin, your views on the subject have been made quite clear. I would like to hear it from someone who knows the Islands, and does not benefit from your wedding their princess.” 

That shut Massey up. 

“Tell me about this Euron. Is he likely to bend the knee to my husband? Will a Stark returned to Winterfell bring the islands back into the king’s peace?”

A giggle did burble out of Theon at that. _His smiling eye, as blue as summer, but never kind,_ “No.” He looked up at her and failed to hold another laugh back, this one harsh and ragged. _The unsmiling, black and cruel._ “No the Crow’s Eye will not bend the knee. Stannis may offer him lands and riches and his own maiden daughter to wed but he is as proud as he is cruel, he will reave his fill and then some.”

The queen thought on that for a moment. 

“Did you know lord Manderly?” the boy he’d half forgotten blurted out before she could speak again. 

“Devan,” said Melisandre sharply.

“You lived in the North. Did you know him?” he persisted, eyes shimmering with unshed tears. 

“I knew him. I was at Winterfell with the Bolton host, and he with his. He was a guest of Lord Roose, but no true friend. When they rode out to do battle with Stannis, the Manderly and Umber men—.” 

“I know that.” The tears broke free and streamed down his face. “I know he’s at Winterfell! And he’s too wounded to speak, and that king Stanns won’t kill him because he needs his son to bend the knee but I want to know if you knew him! And why would he kill my father!” 

“I…”

“Devan, take princess Shireen to her bedchamber.” Melisandre’s voice was low, but it rang through the room like a great bell tolling. “Now.” 

Still crying silently, the boy stood and held his hand out. The princess took it and the pair departed without another word. 

The queen looked as though the buttered bread she had just taken a bite of was half a lemon. 

_Stannis sent his onion lord to parley at the Merman’s court and he got his head and hands mounted on the walls for his trouble, to prove Manderly was loyal to Bolton and a friend of Frey._ Though, the Freys had vanished on the road to Winterfell, and Bolton had been betrayed. Lord Davos had died for a trick, but a clever one. His tarred head and hands may have won his king the North.

So the boy was a son of Stannis’ late hand, no wonder the queen did not care for his outbursts, it was Lord Davos who inspired the king’s men, and he was low born besides.

The queen took another dainty bite, but seemed to like it even less than the last. “How do the Ironborn view their new king? Are they loyal? Will they fight for him, should his rule be threatened?”

 _She is asking me to beg for my life,_ he realized, _she wants me to make a case for deposing Crow’s Eye with my own claim, like the latecomer._ He could see the arguments he might make. His own claim was better, the kingsmoot was not valid with him a prisoner when it took place. Asha might rally for him, Damphair might, and the Cleftjaw’s support would be enough to sway many of his father’s and Victarion’s men. With Stannis, and the North willing to make peace, it could work.

He tried to picture it, the Ironborn cheering his name, himself sitting on the Seastone Chair, Asha on his right, Dagmer on his left, Aeron blessing him once again with seawater from the pouch he wore. He could almost taste the salt for a moment, feel it sting his eyes. But that was not him. The Theon he saw was tall and strong with black hair and a smile. That boy had died. He could not inherit his father’s seat. That was for Asha. 

He grinned at them. “They will fight to the last man for him.” 

Lady Melisandre smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the entire editing process, I had Satin responding to Theon's assertion that the queen meant to burn him with, "that sounds like a personal problem."


	4. Satin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Satin does some investigating, and attends the funeral of the 998th Lord Commander of the night's watch, that is also Theon Greyjoy's execution by burning at the stake.

Castle black was not all that big. The whole of it was little more than a few shabby towers and a few stout buildings huddled up against the base of the wall, but Satin felt like he was exhausting himself doing laps of the place. To the armory, to the king’s tower, and now back to the edge of the trees behind the armory.

He did not know what possessed him to retrace his steps, but every instinct told him he had to go back and look again. 

There was no one there of course. Someone had moved Lew’s body, and no one had lingered where he’d been found. But there were still the bloodstains, and all the tracks of the crowd of men that had come to get a look at the corpse. 

Satin stood for a moment on the spot where Left hand Lew had died. Alden had said the body lay there long hours before Owen found it. 

He looked at the armory, down the narrow path between it and the old stables, only a sliver of the yard could be seen. _He was dead already when I came looking for papers. Not twenty yards away and I never saw him_. It seemed Satin had not been so foolish after all to fear white shadows in the night. But it had not been _his_ throat that was crushed between hungry fangs.

Borroq had not asked if he knew about the body, or had had some hand in killing him, only if he was meeting someone in secret. He traced the path with his eyes that he must have taken to come upon him unawares. There was no way Satin could find that the skinchanger could have failed to spot the body. 

“Queer,” he said aloud, to nobody. 

He stood a moment more, considering the blood. _Can it truly have been Ghost?_

He had not wanted to believe it. Not even for Lew or Wick Wittlestick, much as he had wished them dead. He _knew_ Ghost, had ruffled his ears and received a wet lick to the face so many times. When he thought of the big white wolf, he did not see him ripping throats out. He imagined him rolling in a snowdrift and springing out to shake himself, panting and grinning as hounds did, or curled up beneath the anvil in the forge, only to open one red eye when Satin stopped to give his sleepy head a scratch, and close it again with a sigh. _Could he have hurt Val? And eaten little Monster?_ He had always seemed so fond of the wildling lady. But if he would tear out a man’s throat unprovoked, he might kill a babe. 

_Maybe he went mad with grief at his master’s death._ Satin stepped out of the vaguely Lew shaped imprint in the snow. _Or he knew who’s throat he was tearing out_. 

He took a step toward the edge of the woods. It was a wall unto itself, dense soldier pines crusted with snow all the way up their trunks. A man could get lost in there, or hunted. The wiser choice would be to leave it, go back to the shield hall and find Othell Yarwyck, get a job to do, go stoke the fire in Hobb’s great earthen oven to bake the bread they’d send Tormund’s men off with on the morrow, leave whatever vicious thing was in those woods to its own purposes. 

Greyjoy had said he’d thought he’d seen something in the forest. 

_I should leave it be_ , Satin thought. Then he walked into the trees.

They were quiet, white woods, thick with brush up past his knees. The watch had not thinned out this part of the forest for firewood. For that, they tended to go north, the better to keep the haunted forest at bay. 

He was no tracker, but it was hard to miss the shambling trail Theon Greyjoy had left. 

Greyjoy, there was another queer thing. He was not at all what Satin had expected him to be.

The letter from the Dreadfort they’d gotten all those moons ago, back when the great ranging was still out, had mentioned Theon Greyjoy.

It had seemed very strange to Satin, when Clydas and Maester Aemon stood on the dais in the common hall and read aloud of the murder of the two princes and the sacking and burning of the castle, men who he had never seen so much as sniffle had wiped their eyes and drank all night to the late Lord Stark and his poor sons. It was horrible, to be sure, but the boys and the castle meant little to Satin, except for a vague understanding that they were Jon Snow’s brothers. He did not even know Jon Snow then, only the stories Pyp and Toad and Halder had of the lord commander’s steward. 

Big Liddle, who had gotten up and stormed out of the hall at the news, explained it to him. He liked Big Liddle, who, for all his brusque northern manner, was more likely to tell you a story his grandmother had told him than tell you to fuck off, and blushed under his thick brown beard to be called Duncan. He’d known Lord Eddard and his brothers when they were young men and he was a boy.

When Satin had asked, he'd called him a green summer babe that knew nothing of the winter. He'd told about the cold winds and the hunger, about how, so long as there was a Stark in Winterfell, any man could find a place to sleep and something hot to eat in the Winter Town. If his children were starving and his farm a frozen ruin, he could bring them there and rebuild in spring. A hearthfire had always burned in the heart of the north, he said, until Greyjoy put it to the torch, when Satin asked him why men who cared not at all for Jon Snow wept to hear the ghastly fate of his half brothers.

He’d expected the man who’d done that to innocent children to be… somehow intimidating. He’d thought that kind of deed would show in a man, make him threatening. Satin was scared of a lot of things, but not even he could muster much more than a bit of discomfort looking at Theon Greyjoy. 

He’d meant to ask Theon why he’d done it, or if it was even true, or if he was really flayed alive inch by inch, or half a hundred things about Jon Snow, since they had been foster brothers. But he’d forgotten in the excitement of finding Left hand Lew’s body. _Empty-headed, that’s what I am._ That’s what the full time guard who lived with them at the brothel always said, _Our pretty Satin, nothing between his ears but satin silk and perfume puffs._

But Satin could not be empty-headed now. He needed all his wits and then some. Around him the woods felt watchful. No birds called in the treetops, nothing but him moved in the still air.

His head was full enough with wits, it seemed, because he heard the voices, floating faintly through that snow-muffled silence just in time, just before he stumbled into the clearing where he’d found Greyjoy kneeling. 

“That I can’t tell you,” someone was saying, “You’d have to ask one of the men who was there.”

Satin dove face first into the snowy bracken. 

“The ones who killed him might have seen, they’d be the last to catch so much as hide or hair o’ the wolf. Everything else is rumors and hearsay.”

He couldn’t see past the end of his own nose, so dense was the snow and underbrush, but he knew the voice. _Borroq_.

“That may be beyond even me. They keep the murderers shut up safe in the queen’s tower for fear of him, and of Tormund. Our friend they found out there this morning only proves why. I can scarcely question them on what they saw that night,” said another voice.

“I don’t see him, but I smell him enough, my girl can hardly get within a league o’ the castle at night, then by morning he’s left his scent through half the woods twice over. He backtracks and leaves false trails, so she can’t track him to his lair, and he never forgets to piss right on my doorstep, to mock me.” 

“Clever wolf.” 

“Clever _warg_."

“That remains to be seen,” said the second man, “The boy I remember couldn’t slip his skin by choice. Even if he had the gift, like as not, it’s just the direwolf. I’ve never known a skinchanger to take his second life by sheer luck and instinct.”

“I’ve known more skinchangers than you.”

A huff of a laugh. “I’ll not deny it.” 

They were close enough now that Satin could hear their boots crunch in the snow. With that came the sound of the boar. Snuffling and trodding through the brush with heavy hooves. To his relief, she was far on the other side of the clearing, well away from him. 

He heard one of the men shuffle, crouching. The one who was not Borroq said, “He was here? And after daybreak? So close to the kill, it sounds unlike the crafty beast you’ve spun your tale about.” 

“Less clever today. He was here, no more than an hour ago, his scent’s clear as yours.”

“It mightn’t be another ruse? If he was marking this part of the woods last night…”

“Doubt my wits, my spear, my loyalty, doubt my skill in changing skins, but never let me hear you doubt my fucking nose.”

A real laugh then. “Can you track him then, on this his least clever day? I want that wolf, Borroq. Warg or no, if it killed my son, I mean to make it answer for every false promise Jon Snow made to me and mine before they killed him.”

 _Son?_ Satin had to stifle a gasp when he puzzled it out. 

He was dead though. Ulmer and his archers had shot him full of feathers and the fire had consumed him.

 _The letter said he was at Winterfell, in a cage wearing the skins of his spearwives_. Satin had not been in the shield hall to hear Jon Snow read it aloud, but he’d had it from Leathers afterward. Everyone knew what the letter said. 

“Might be I can track him. Something today has made him careless. I’ll have my price though.” 

“Your price? Ah yes! I recall. Well, I lost my lute at Winterfell but they couldn’t take my voice. Which one will you have?”

Borroq’s voice had moved across the clearing. “I feel a chill, the one with the summer maids, to warm me.” 

“The summer maids? Let me see if I still know them...” 

He started to hum, Satin recognized “Fair Maids of Summer” There were six verses and six maids, each named for a flower that bloomed in summer. It was a sweet song. Each girl was described as though she were the flower she was named after. 

“Ohhhh Rose, she was a pretty maid with hair as red as cherries,” Mance Rayder sang, “Her gown was thorns all the way down but her lips were sweet as berries.”

Mance had a good voice, an easy tenor that kept rhythm and tune even without a lute or harp. Not as sweet as Dareon’s had been, but he’d get more than a few coppers if he sang in the corner of some inn. 

“Ohhhh daisy’s hair was pale as dawn, her eyes a summer sunrise...” 

Too late, Satin realized he couldn’t hear footsteps anymore. _The boar!_ Where was the boar? He could not hear it, no, he made out the snuffling, the boar was still across the clearing. But Borroq...

A big hand grabbed him by the scruff, and yanked him roughly up out of the underbrush. Satin cried out and put his arms up to protect his face and neck.

Mance was still standing in the middle of the clearing, he stopped mid-verse. Satin recognized him now. He’d come with the prisoners from Winterfell, his hair cut short and bruises on his face. But now he was in blacks, and the way he stood was different somehow, taller. Satin didn’t know how he could have mistaken him for some starving Bolton man. The boar was still far off beyond him, nose down, rooting through the frozen deadfall.

Borroq, who easily dangled Satin by one hand gripping his cloak, had a knife pressed to his belly.

“A crow.” Borroq said.

Satin choked out a miserable squeak in response, the cross-chest leather straps that held his cloak on had forced all the air from his lungs. He let his hands fall to his sides. 

Mance looked at him, and laughed. “He sounds more like a mouse to me, and not a sneaky one, to hide upwind.”

 _Satin silk and perfume puffs indeed._

Borroq brought their faces close. “What are you doing in the woods, little crow? Papers to collect out here as well?”

 _He knows me this time._ Satin scrabbled at the ground with his feet. He was just as tall as Borroq was and could reach, but the skinchanger gave him a brusque shake, like a naughty kitten. “I told you not to sneak around alone! Now I’ve got to kill you.”

“Wait, don’t kill him.” Mance came toward them. “I know this one, he was Jon Snow’s steward.”

“All the more reason then! He’s in league with the wolf. He was out here last night, when the blood from the other crow it killed wasn’t half cool. He must have known about it.”

“I’m not!” Satin managed, “I didn’t!”

“A better liar than he is a sneak. I believed him last night, I won’t make the same mistake again.”

Satin snuck a hand behind his own back, reaching for his knife.

“A moment.” Mance put a staying hand on Borroq’s broad shoulder. “Let him go, he’s not going to run. He’s looking for the same thing we are.” He looked to Satin. “Have I guessed right? I saw you in the shield hall, you would do well to learn to guard your face better. When Yarwyck said the wolf savaged my good-sister and my son you nearly said aloud it wasn’t true. You came looking for the wolf, and you’re not going to run, or go for that knife.” 

Satin flushed and dropped his hand. Mance smirked. His eyes glittered, even if they were both blacked.

Borroq stood him back on his feet and, patting down his side, found the knife. He took it away, glowering. “We would do better to kill him.” 

Mance clapped Satin on the shoulder. “On the contrary, we could hardly do worse. He’s going to solve one of our problems for us.”

* * *

The wind was still gusting cold from the west when Satin made his way back across the yard. 

Truly, he felt like he was walking in circles.

Over by the base of the wall, where the snow had piled up twenty feet and more, a team of ten men with spades were digging. Spare Boot supervised three builders, six odd stewards, and one of Harle the Handsome’s men, or was it Harle the Huntsman’s? Satin had never learned which was which. 

Neither war chief was very handsome, and neither looked much like a huntsman to him. This man looked like neither. 

He stopped to watch them work, from enough of a distance that the one legged builder might not spot him and tell him to join. He had time enough to loiter, not to be dragged into the digging project. 

From the look of the hole they were making, they were not trying to clear the whole snowdrift, only access what lay beneath. _They are digging out his body_. There were only three prisoners in the ice cells. But there had been little need to keep them from smothering under the accumulating snow. All the occupants were corpses. Two were dead wildlings, clasped in chains, and one was all in black. 

Karstark’s men that had been held there were now in the undervault of the ruins of the Lord Commander’s tower, and their would-be lord, Cregan, dined with the queen. Most brothers agreed it would have been better to let him freeze. He had not made himself popular with the throwing of frozen shit whenever someone tried to feed him.

On the other side of the yard, another team of men were busy dismantling the barricade around the King’s tower. In the midday sunlight, it was almost too bright to see across the snowy yard.

When he had first arrived at castle black, with Conwy and Hop-Robin and the Fair Isle boys, it had been muddy most days. Castle black might better have been named castle brown, or grey. It had rained more than it snowed. 

But the short autumn had given way to winter and now it was all clean and white and black, earning it’s name for true. 

Satin watched Horse heave a big shovelful of snow out of the hole, and decided he didn’t want to be there when they reached their goal. He didn’t want to see them pull the body out. 

He shivered, and hurried across, back to the King’s tower. As he passed the men working on flattening the low snow wall, he did not meet any of their eyes. 

_Don’t look at me, I’m of no import,_ he thought at them as loudly as he could. He wasn’t sure he could tell the lie outright if someone he knew asked him what he was doing, and for who.

None of them looked, or if they did, they took no notice. He’d made it past the first stumbling block. 

Next, the door. He knew the man who guarded it, Ser Narbert, still. They had not changed shifts since he had brought Theon Greyjoy. _Not the worst, it might have been Malegorn._

“Back again? I shall start thinking you are making excuses just to visit me.” The knight said, good-naturedly. He had never been one to look down his nose at Satin, or eye him darkly as Ser Patrek of King’s Mountain had.

Satin gave his prettiest, most empty-headed smile. “For you, Ser, I should think of better excuses. It’s the cook I’m afraid. He wants Marsh’s turnip counts as last he had them from the stewards. For the feast, you know, Ser, to send off the wildlings.”

“Turnips! Seven save us from turnips. I shall be glad to be away to Winterfell if it will mean an end to the things.”

“I hope you find better fare there, Ser. It looks to be neeps until spring for us brothers.” 

“I shan’t keep you from your counts then, I believe the Lord Steward is still at table with her grace.” The knight stepped aside and let him through the door. 

His heart was still in his throat as he climbed the stair. The lie would not keep. When the guard changed, Narbert would mention him to the others, and it would come out soon enough that he had not gone to see Bowen Marsh.

He swallowed the fear. That was for later. Better the queen’s men suspect him than Mance and Borroq kill him for failing in the task they’d set. _Forget me, ser Narbert. It was a routine visit, of no remark. Bowen Marsh is stewarding from a tower cell, a hundred messages come and go each day. Forget I came at all._

Then he was there, outside the room that he had heard a man crying in as he and Greyjoy passed on the way up the stairs. He brought his hand up to knock, then thought better, if they asked who was there they would never let him in. 

He steeled himself and pulled the door open just wide enough to slip inside before his fear caught up with him. 

It was a poorly lit cell, and crowded with six cots all crammed into a space that was likely never meant for more than two guardsmen. There were few other places to put them, Satin supposed, with all of Queen Selyse’s personal guards, her ladies and maids all needing to be quartered, and then Lady Melisandre, the princess, Axell Florent, Cregan Karstark, and Bowen marsh all requiring private cells. 

Two of the pallets lay empty, he knew, Wick Wittlestick and Left Hand Lew would not be needing them. 

Alf of Runnymudd looked up with red rimmed eyes. Old Kegs had a hand on his shoulder, but the young builder shoved it off when he saw Satin. 

“ _You_. What are _you_ doing here?” He reached for the handle of his dagger. His voice was rough from crying.

Satin put his own hands up, palms out, wishing Borroq had given him back his knife. “I just want to talk, Alf.” He glanced at the other three “Kegs, Fulk, Goady. I came to talk, I don’t mean any harm.” He fought to keep his words steady. One of him and four of them, and all bigger, more able fighters with good reason to have no love for him.

Alf snorted “He wants to talk! The little whore’s come to gloat about what his wolf did to Lew.”

“That isn’t why I’m here.” He snapped, his temper flared despite his fear. He had grown too used to trading barbs with Alf in the yard, where there was usually a crossbow between him and the other man. “He’s not my wolf.”

That got another snort, and Alf looked away in scorn. “Make him go. Before I kill him. He was the bastard’s slut and I don’t want to look at him.”

 _You don’t do anything stupid,_ Clydas had warned him. Well, Satin had always been a little stupid. From anyone else, he might have taken the insult, but from Alf, it stung too much to bear.

“Don’t call me that,” He grit out, “I’m as much a brother as you. I earned my place here.” 

Alf of Runnymudd still wouldn’t look at him. He sneered to Fulk the Flea instead. “Aye, earned it in the baths and the bedchambers” 

The ranger snickered. 

“Earned it on his back and on his knees, a true brother of the watch, helping us all to keep our vows.” Alf was grinning now, and Fulk laughed openly.

Satin misliked the feeling in the room. He wanted to edge back toward the door. Laughing men could be much more dangerous than angry ones, when you were the joke.

Alf was about to say something else, to Kegs this time, with a nasty curl to his lip, when Goady moved across the chamber. Satin flinched, but the ranger just put himself slightly between Alf’s dagger hand and Satin.

“Leave him be, he’s done nothing you haven’t,” he said to Alf, “I knew your Garth longer than you did and you dishonor him with your words. Or have you so soon forgotten Garth Greyfeather?”

The smile died on Alf of Runnymudd’s face. Tears sprang anew to his eyes. “Don’t you talk about Garth,” he muttered, “that's different.” 

“Say what you came to,” to Satin this time, “you’d have to be stupider than Owen, or mad as Easy to come here of all places, so it must be deadly serious.”

Satin took a steadying breath, still eyeing the ranger. His sword belt was on his cot, and he did not look like he was about to attack him. 

He bit his lip, “Well, I did come about Ghost. I mean, I came to ask about Ghost that is. Ser Justin needs to make his report to the king.” The lie came as quick and naturally as the one he’d told about the turnips. “Stannis will want to know what became of the wildling princess and the babe. Everyone says Ghost had something to do with what happened to them, and you four would be the last to see him… After everything.”

Fulk had recovered from his snickering enough to cut in, “Last to see him trying to tear my bloody arm off.” His right arm was bandages from elbow to shoulder. 

“You could as well ask any of the knights or half the wildlings. All were there,” said Kegs.

"But they were all looking at the giant,” Satin said, some of his courage returning. They hadn’t even thought to ask why ser Justin wouldn’t simply come interview them himself, when he was just upstairs. “Ghost was trying to tear your arm off, Fulk, I thought your attention would be more on him.”

Fulk rubbed at the bandages on his wounded arm. “He came for me after he killed Sweet Donnel. But he dropped me right quick when he went after ser Brus and the babe. Brus was fighing with that wildling girl, she wanted the boy back.” 

“And did you see what happened? To the babe?”

Fulk shrugged, “What happens to babes when wolves get them twixt their teeth? Never saw it die but I’ll wager he was a sight more tender than my arm.

“I saw blood on his mouth,” said Kegs, “Didn’t stay to watch, after what happened to Sweet Donnel, I ran. Always liked my insides, _inside._ The wildling girl went after him and I haven’t seen no babes or pretty girls since.”

Satin nodded, pressing his lips together. It was not enough, this was no more than anyone else knew of what had happened that night.

Goady nodded to show that they were done, “There you have your answer, steward, go find Massey, tell him what we said and begone. I like the look of you little more than Alf does. Your bastard was a turncloak and a craven and you spit on the watch by defending his memory and standing with his wildlings.” 

Hearing his name, Alf of Runnymudd stirred. He was on his feet in an instant, sudden fury on his face. Before Satin could do anything he had him pinned against the door.

“He got my Garth killed.” he hissed in Satin’s face. “He sent him out to the weeping man and when his eyeless head came back he still would’ve given that monster a black cloak if he asked for one.” 

Satin dared not look away from Alf’s eyes, even to glance down to see if there was a dagger about to stick him. They were bloodshot, he’d likely been crying since they got the news of Left hand Lew, oddly it made them very blue. He could feel the other man breathe, hard and shaky. 

“If I could kill him again I would. The red god should have him to burn again and again forever, and that’d be too good for him. I should gut you just for getting in his bed.” 

“I never…” Satin breathed, and felt the dagger press into the wool of his shirt by his ribs. 

“Don’t you lie! Don’t you do it.” Alf was half sobbing again. 

Satin barely dared to blink.

“Just... We were right to kill him. Just say it! He was no true lord commander.” Tears streamed down his face.

Moving almost on its own, Satin’s hand came up. If Alf was going to stab him, he was going to stab him. He reached between them and cupped his wet face gently with a palm.

“He never meant for Garth to die,” he murmured. 

Alf held him there for a moment more, then abruptly drew away. He turned his back and rubbed at his face roughly with a sleeve. The dagger fell unblooded to land with a thunk among the rushes. 

Stiffly, satin looked at the other three, none had moved to help.

“You have my thanks. I’ll not trouble you more.”

With that he slipped back out, quiet as he had come. 

Only once he’d taken a half turn down the stairs did he hear his heart pounding in his ears and grow faint, the tower spun around him and he put a hand on the wall. _Stupid, I fought and held against an army of a hundred thousand wildlings. It was only Alf._ He slid down the wall to sit a moment on the stairs. His hands were shaking and he clasped them around his knees. When they’d fought Styr’s Thenns and the raiders who had climbed the wall, Jon Snow had been there to shake him out of it when he’d almost lost his wits, there to shout orders and keep them all brave when Mance came down upon the wall with all his might. Jon Snow was not there now. 

It was all for naught. They had known nothing more of the wolf and the baby. Mance would kill him now, no doubt. He’d failed in the simple task he’d been given. A simple task and an impossible one, what a stupid way to die. 

* * *

As the sun set, there was no moon rising over the forest to the east. The first twinkling of the eye in the ice dragon’s rider, and one of the wanderers, Satin knew not which, was all that could be seen of stars just yet. 

Everyone shuffled from foot to foot, waiting. The queen and her ladies and guardsmen, Tormund and his wildlings, every black brother who was not assigned to some duty that could not be delayed.

One of the queen’s men who had come up from winterfell placed a final bundle of sticks at the base of the pyre, and nearly all was ready. The bodies were already in place, all that remained was the empty stake in the center. 

“I did not mean for this,” Ser Justin Massey said to Theon Greyjoy, who he held by the cord that bound his wrists, “I advised her grace to let you take the black, I never... Whatever I said in the shield hall, believe me, I never wished you dead.” 

The prisoner was oddly calm, no fits of giggling from him, no crying and trying to escape, he looked up at the stack of wood, and the pole to which he would be tied with what seemed to Satin like resignation. 

“If there is aught you would have me tell Lady Asha, when I return, I will pass any message on.” Massey gave a weak smile. 

“I had a horse called Smiler once,” Greyjoy mumbled. He turned for a moment to look at the knight, “He burned.”

The smile vanished. 

Satin pulled his cloak more firmly around his shoulders, and wished he’d gone back to the shield hall and gotten the extra fur, the one from the Lord Commander’s bed. He’d stashed it in a corner that morning. But he had not dared to go to the shield hall, that was where he might encounter Borroq or Mance Rayder. 

He had spent the rest of the day skulking, finding one job to do after another that would keep him well away from places the wildlings might find him alone. 

Hobb had been glad of an extra pair of hands in the kitchens. Satin had found Owen the oaf down there, happily recovered from his discovery of that morning. The two of them chopped onions and neeps and Owen told him all about who got Lew’s boots and who his fine steel dagger. 

“He got to keep his cloak though. Nice wool cloak that, but it’s for his shroud, they’re burning him tonight along with Lord Snow,” he’d said. 

And so they were. Two corpses lay atop the pyre, not one. Satin did not want to look, but he gathered his courage. He owed him a final word, a small goodbye, he certainly owed Jon Snow that much at least.

He took a breath and strode up. The two stewards who had borne the corpse out on a palette eyed him, but they let him by.

And then there was nothing between him and the corpse.

It was not as terrible as that, really. It was just Jon. Plain and brown and a little horsey-faced. He was still in the clothes he’d died in, Satin couldn’t even see the blood that froze them solid to his body. The blacks were just black. The only blood to be seen was what had frozen on his neck and crusted in his hair. 

_Sam should be here, and Pyp and Grenn, they knew him better._ If he ever saw them again, he’d tell them it was not so bad. The look on his face was not even one of pain or fear. He might have been asleep.

He realized then that he had no idea what one said to the corpse of a friend. _What did he say to his wildling girl as she lay dying in his arms? What did he whisper while he held her body?_ Satin didn’t know, he’d stood by and let Jon Snow cradle her corpse and cry, kneeling in the ash and mud of the ruined yard after the battle, but he had not stood close enough to hear. 

He pulled off a glove and laid a hand on Jon Snow’s cold chest. He was frozen through.

“Thank you, my lord, for being kind to me. And for pretending you didn’t notice I pissed myself when the wildlings came.” Satin said it quietly, it wasn’t for anyone to hear. “I’m sorry I let the fire in your chamber burn down to embers so often, and that I tried to kiss you. I’m also sorry I never did kiss you. I hope your old gods are kinder than the seven, and that you’re with them.” 

With that he left, and rejoined the crowd. The sun was sinking fast. Satin could make out the whole long spine of the ice dragon now, and part of the crone’s lantern. 

Clydas took a moment with the body, and so did Bowen Marsh, who had emerged from the King’s tower for the first time since the mutiny. The lord Steward had tears in his eyes, and did not seem to be cursing Jon Snow as he said a quick word and then stepped down and went to stand with the rest of the men who had killed him. 

Satin caught Mance Rayder looking at him from among the Winterfell recruits, and studiously did not meet his eyes. Instead he watched Ser Justin and Ser Brus haul Theon Greyjoy up and tie him to the stake. 

When the last sliver of the sun vanished below the trees, she was there. As if by magic she appeared without warning, Red and resplendent. Ser Godry Farring was beside her with a burning torch. 

She started to sing, and Satin didn’t bother to listen to the words. He would rather this were over with. There would be food in the shield hall afterward, enough to send Tormund and his men on their way to Oakenshield with full bellies and no ill will toward the Watch.

The red woman extended her hand, and the knight handed her the torch. She put it to her lips as though it were a chalice and sipped the flames. Then, handing the torch back to Ser Godry, Lady Melisandre bent over Jon Snow, and she kissed him.

Then she drew back with a gasp, flame still dancing on her breath. 

She stumbled and almost fell. Morgan, one of her drunk guardsmen caught her arm. Ser Godry dropped the torch on the ground and went for his sword. 

“No!” she said, “wait, he is no wight.” 

Satin saw him move. 

The hush turned into a murmur and then a clamor as men began to shout, someone yelled “Burn it! Burn it! Set it alight!” but it was all a quiet roaring in his ears as he watched the lifeless chest that had been frozen solid only moments before shudder, and begin to rise and fall. 

Satin stumbled forward. _It cannot be_. He stepped, and stepped again and somehow nobody stopped him in the confusion. His hands found the wood of the pyre, and then the wool of the blacks. They were warm, and wet with blood, the man under them was too. 

Jon Snow’s eyes were not starry and blue, they were grey, and soft as summer rainstorms. They turned to Satin, unseeing.

“Arya?” His voice was scarcely more than a hoarse whisper. “Little sister, I dreamed I was a wolf.”

The red woman was shouting orders, “Put it out! Put all the fires out, there will be no pyre tonight!” 

Men all around were yelling, and above it, he could hear Theon Greyjoy laughing. He was still laughing when they cut him down from the stake, and as they dragged him back to his cell the king’s tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been wanting to get to this scene for quite a while! I hope I did it justice. Next chapter we will see it from Theon's perspective as well. Usually I don't overlap POVs but this moment is so important I think we can stand to see it twice :D


	5. Theon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theon attends his own execution, and meets the princess afterward. The next morning he is taken to see the Lord Commander.

The scent of smoke was in the air, as the early dusk of winter crept upon them. It might have been smoke from a dozen hearths, or the ovens in the kitchen, but bound, and barefoot, looking up at the pyre that would be his death, Theon Greyjoy imagined he could smell the ashes of yesterday’s nightfire, as if they were still smoldering.

They had stacked the wood on the loose circle of ash, he guessed they built it there every night, far enough from the base of the wall that it did not melt a cavern into its face, but near enough that he could see their shadows play upon the glassy surface of the ice as they arranged logs and branches on the pile. 

Theon shivered to watch them, he had no cloak, and no shoes. They had been good boots, and a good wool cloak, too good to waste in the fire. He was not a brother, to be wrapped in his own black cloak for a funeral shroud. Theon Greyjoy’s cloak had turned too many times to shroud him. His feet were numb, but he couldn’t be bothered to care, he would not live long enough for the frost to claim more toes than he had already lost.

Ser Justin kept shooting him mournful looks that he did his best to ignore. Massey’s guilty conscience was the least of his concerns. 

_There are worse ways to die,_ Theon thought, but was not sure he believed it. It was too windy, and the pyre built too well for the smoke to smother him before the flames licked at his flesh. These queen’s men were practiced in burning men alive. They’d hear him scream before the end, he had no doubt. _There are worse things, than to die screaming._

Two bodies, wrapped in black, were carried past. Their brothers were brusque and businesslike in placing them on the stack of wood, no arranging them just so. They were frozen too stiff to do anything about positioning them in a dignified manner anyway. 

Justin Massey shifted uncomfortably and fidgeted with the rope he held Theon by. He took a breath as if to speak, and then didn’t. 

Theon thought of a black horse screaming as his mane caught fire, the stables of Winterfell burning all around him. Horses could always scream so terribly, worse than a man in truth. Northmen and Ironborn alike shrieked as they were cut down by the riders under the banner of the Dreadfort, some wept and begged, some tried to yield, some howled as they died but none had ever screamed so horribly as that horse. 

“I did not mean for this,” said Ser Justin, like it mattered, “I advised her grace to let you take the black, I never... Whatever I said in the shield hall, believe me, I never wished you dead.”

Theon didn’t bother to look at him, he only had eyes for the stake that rose in the center of the pyre. His ears still rang with the sounds of Winterfell burning, of the horse dying.

“If there is aught you would have me tell Princess Asha, when I return, I will pass any message on.” 

Theon glanced over to the knight. He had a smile again. Stannis had called him the smiler. People used to say Theon smiled too much. He’d named the horse Smiler too. He told Massey as much, but Ser Worm didn’t seem to think it was very funny. He didn’t try to say anything after that. 

They waited in silence, the sun took its time in setting. Theon shivered in the cold. _Relish the cold while you can, turncloak, you will be warm enough soon,_ he sneered to himself.

After what seemed an interminable stretch of silent, shivering waiting, it was time. Another of the queen’s men came over to help in case he struggled, and the pair of them lifted him up onto the stack of wood. Ser Justin stayed on the ground, but the other knight climbed up to tie him to the stake. Theon entertained the thought of asking the man to kill him first, considered kicking out and shouting insults to provoke him into silencing him with steel, but he didn’t, perhaps there was some small part of him still vain enough to imagine he had dignity to die with. 

The knight’s breath misted out steady and unhurried, Theon was not so heavy that lifting him had winded either of the men. He wrapped the cord around Theon and the pole, binding him fast to the wood. Theon’s breath came out in faint uneven puffs, feeling the cord tighten against his ribs. He was not afraid, but even so his heart raced. He wondered if the knight could hear it pounding, it was all Theon could hear. 

When he was done tying the last knots, the knight jumped down, and Theon was alone with the corpses. 

One, he already knew, he’d seen Left Hand Lew that morning, the other was a much more distant memory. Jon Snow had aged, not as Theon had aged, but he had been a man grown when he died. How old would he be now? Seventeen?

The ashen face was hard to make out in the growing gloom. There was blood frozen in his hair. Theon remembered the last time he’d seen Jon Snow, his hair was shorter then. They had not so much as exchanged words. Proud little bastard that he was, Jon had ridden out without even looking at Theon the day the royal party left Winterfell. Robb had hugged his brother goodbye as a light flurry of snow drifted down. He’d been wiping tears away when he came back, though he hadn’t meant for Theon to see. 

_Would you kill me, Jon Snow? I slew Bran and Rickon and razed Winterfell, but I saved her. I saved Lady Arya, never mind she had brown eyes instead of grey. If I came to you a prisoner and you the Lord Commander, would you have had my head?_ It didn’t matter, He hadn’t saved Jeyne because he thought it would spare him, or even because she was Arya. Jon was dead in any case, and soon Theon would be too. He wished they’d hurry up and be done with it. Death would not be so bad, it would only mean his teeth and his shoulder and his legs and feet and hands would stop hurting.

He looked out at the crowd of people who would watch him die. The queen was there, but not the princess. Cregan Karstark, with his three men, now all in black, had returned from his trip out to the weirwood grove just in time. Tormund and a few of his wildling chiefs could be seen milling among the other black brothers, none of the some forty wildling children that he had seen in the shield hall. All the men from Winterfell were there, some didn’t meet his eyes when he looked at them, but most didn’t flinch from him. One man who’s name Theon didn’t know, he might have been a Ryswell, spat when their eyes met for a moment. Steelshanks met his gaze evenly though, and so did Abel. Sour Alyn and Grunt as well, Grunt looked none too pleased, he’d probably wanted to kill Theon himself rather than let him burn. 

Then, suddenly and silently, she was there, in a swirl of red silk and a flicker of flame Melisandre appeared beside the pyre, Ser Godry at her side with a lit torch. 

_Not long now,_ He could almost have wept with relief as the priestess started to sing. It would all be over soon. No one would mourn him. Asha would take the islands back, he was sure, With Stannis behind her and Ser Justin, Dagmer too. She’d rule and do it well, she was made for ruling, the Ironborn loved her.

Melisandre sang to her red god, and Theon Greyjoy prepared himself to be devoured by it. 

_I would have liked to see the sea, one more time._

The priestess paused in her singing, took the torch from her knight, and, drawing the flames into her mouth, bent to give Jon Snow the Last Kiss. 

Then, as she breathed the fire into the corpse, before his very eyes, the dead man moved. 

One moment he was frozen stiff and solid, then it was as though a wave passed through him. First his chest shuddered under the priestess’ hands, then his shoulders loosened, and his arms and legs went limp. And then, as she stumbled back in surprise, his eyes fluttered gently open. 

A warm breath misted from his lips.

Men started to yell, Ser Godry drew his sword, Melisandre shouted, someone stumbled forward to Jon’s side, and Theon started to laugh. 

His chest shook with it, manically he laughed. The cords wrapped around him cut into his ribs and arms as he convulsed. The torch was put out, he would not burn this night. And he laughed. Delayed and delayed and spared and spared again, how many times could one man fail to die? He laughed, and laughed, couldn’t stop even as his throat grew sore. He could scarcely even hear himself, but the breaths came out of him in great jagged clouds, as if the pyre had been lit after all. 

Someone helped Jon Snow, limp and weak as a newborn, off the stack of wood, and carried him away. Ser Justin climbed up himself to cut Theon, still laughing, down.

* * *

He did stop, eventually, after his voice had all but given out. Back in his cell in the King’s tower, he rasped his thanks when Ser Perkin brought him a serving of whatever supper was being eaten down in the shield hall. 

His feet had begun to thaw out, and he did not think there was serious frostbite. Still six toes for him. _Lucky me_ , he thought wryly. Four on the right and two on the left. He would have cut them all off though, to stop the burning of them coming back to life after being so numb. He sat on the floor and clenched his toes, then flexed them, feeling the blood flow hot and painful in the cold flesh. They had not given him back his boots, the miserly black bastards.

Theon set his supper down on the floor so as not to spill it as he grabbed the blanket from the cot. His hands were still bound, and the left arm was still in the sling, he didn’t trust himself to both balance the food and grab the heavy wool blanket. They had afforded him that luxury at least. It was not a prison cell in truth, just a bedchamber with a door that locked. There were proper dungeons carved into the base of the wall, they called them the ice cells. Compared to that, he was practically a royal guest in his tower room with air warm enough to thaw his frozen feet. Just outside was the queen’s solar, with a cheerful fire in the hearth. Wrapped up in the blanket and seated against the wall, he could even be comfortable. The food smelled good, almost good enough to distract him from his toes, and what had happened at the pyre. 

His window was lit by the dim glow of the nightfire. They had lit it after all, but it was only an ordinary nightfire, nothing burned tonight but wood. Well, and Left Hand Lew.

He tried not to think about what had happened. If he thought too much about it he might start laughing again. Out of humor or fear though, he wasn’t sure. Theon closed his eyes and once again saw Jon’s corpse open its own, and take a breath. He opened them again quickly to banish the vision. Jon had been dead and cold as stone, he _knew_ he’d been dead, stiff and frozen, and yet he saw the breath. The gods played cruel japes. He should have known they would not let him die. He could not die, not when there was some more mummery to be had from him yet. Or perhaps they just wanted Eddard Stark’s son to take his head after all. Theon focused on the food.

Neeps and onions, carrots and pease with brown gravy that tasted of some meat or other in a trencher of hard bread, and a mug of thick ale. Not poor fare. For a prisoner, it was kingly. Theon wondered if the queen was more merciful than he had taken her for, or if someone thought to ply him for something with good food. 

He drank the beer first. That was easiest. Bitter and foamy, and a little sweet, it had no hops that he could taste. A poor brew that might have fallen anywhere between ale and stout. Whoever had brewed it was little skilled, it would not have been worth a copper at an inn, but it was nourishing and it made his head swim pleasantly, which in turn made the agony of chewing the vegetables just slightly less. He avoided the carrots and neeps, they had not been stewed long enough to be soft, but sucked down the peas and gravy, and tore out bits of bread that had soaked some of it up. 

He dropped the trencher though, spilling the rest, when a key rattled in the door to his cell, startling him. Instinct made him scramble forward and try to scoop the food back into the heel of bread, to try to hide that he had spilled what he’d been given. 

The door opened just a crack, and two wide sets of eyes peeked in. 

Children. It was only the children. 

One of them gasped to see him crouched there, wild and frantic in the dark.

“Shh Devan!” said the girl.

“You shh,”

“Go in! Ser Perkin will be back any moment, and he’ll notice the key is gone soon!”

The pair of them bustled in and shut the door behind. All the while Theon watched, dumbfounded. 

The boy, whom Melisandre had called Devan that morning, kept the princess behind him, and she wrinkled her nose at Theon’s smell, though she did not look like her mother when she made the same expression, Theon could only see Stannis in the girl. In the dark of his cell, the mottled grey scarring on her face was harder to make out. She was only a little girl really, tall for her age, but likely only as old as Arya, the true Arya that was, not Jeyne.

He felt very shabby and monstrous then, hunched over his spilled food on the floor in the shadows, stinking and haggard. No wonder her eyes were wide as robin’s eggs. He must seem more an animal than a man to a young girl of gentle birth. 

“Theon Greyjoy,” said the boy. 

Theon showed them his teeth, and the way both of their eyes widened even more, whites bright in the dim orange light from the window was gratifying. 

The princess nudged her companion with an elbow. He glanced back at her, then quickly brought his eyes warily back to Theon, as though he might spring at them and gobble them up if he let him out of his sight for even an instant. 

Theon didn’t imagine he was capable of even standing suddenly, let alone springing like a shadowcat, but he remembered the fear children have of old, decrepit things. He’d had nightmares as a boy of Old Nan’s toothless mouth devouring his fingers one by one.

“Ask him, Dev,” Shireen whispered, eyes still wide and blue and scared of him. She clasped the squire’s arm in her hands and the boy caught his breath at her touch. In the dim flickering light from the window, he might have blushed. He moved to keep his body well between Theon and the princess.

Her hand on his arm seemed to lend the boy courage. “Is it true that Lord Snow came back from the dead?” he asked. 

“The knights won’t tell us anything,” the girl cut in, “Lady Melisandre hasn’t come back, and my mother the queen went to bed straight away.”

The boy continued “There are stories of dead men rising, evil and cold with blue eyes and black hands. The brothers say they were attacked by an army of such, beyond the wall. Did he come back as one of them?” 

Old Nan had told stories of dead men that came at the command of the others, did southron boys and girls believe such things? Theon put his ghastly grin away, the sport had gone out of scaring children and pretending to be a grumkin. 

“Dead men?” he asked.

Devan and the princess nodded in unison, seeming to relax as he once again became a man who spoke words and not a monster that snarled in the dark. 

“Wights, the brothers call them. They’re cold and wicked, and they shamble,” the boy said, “One tried to kill the Lord Commander, the one before Jon Snow, but Lord Snow killed it first by burning down the tower”

Theon almost chucked, only Jon Snow could burn a tower down and be counted a hero for it. He shook his head. “His eyes were grey. He was warm. He almost fell off the pyre and needed help. He did not seem like to try to murder anyone.” His voice was still a rasp as he spoke.

“So it is true!” exclaimed princess Shireen. She let go of Devan’s elbow to clasp her hands together in delight.

Devan was more reserved. His face was grim. “The Lord of Light must have some purpose for him yet.”

“Oh, Devan.” The princess deflated, sad suddenly. She put her hand on his shoulder, “Your lord father and brothers, I’m sure they…”

“They are with him now, their purposes were served,” he said flatly, more bold than a serving boy ought to speak to a princess, even the son of her father’s lord hand. Shireen drew her hand back as if he had shrugged her off, though he had made no move.

“Your father’s death bought Stannis the North,” Theon said suddenly, not knowing why. What did he care if the boy grieved for his brothers and his father? A thousand boys had lost brothers and fathers in the war. Still, he spoke on, his voice a harsh whisper, “Manderly needed to prove his loyalty. While the Lannisters still held his son Wylis, he could not be seen to sympathise with Stannis. He’s fat and he’s far from kind but he is not a fool.”

Devan opened his mouth to protest but Theon pressed on, “Don’t be stupid, boy. If Lord Davos had gone to White Harbor and lived, there would have been no mermen at Winterfell to turn the battle in Stannis’ favor. Your father did not die in vain. Manderly isn’t your enemy.”

Tears were glittering in the boy’s eyes again, and for a moment Theon wondered if he’d use the knife at his belt, but after a breath, his shoulders slumped. “It isn’t fair.” he muttered hotly, rubbing the tears away with the back of a sleeve. “He took him once already and gave him back. Why should I have to lose him twice?”

Theon shuffled uncomfortably, he had meant it as a kindness, he supposed, telling the boy his father died for a purpose. Theon’s father died pointlessly, falling from a bridge in a storm leaving his brothers to squabble over his broken little kingdom, Devan’s had brought the strongest house in the North to his king’s cause, and all it had cost him was his head and two hands mounted on the walls of White Harbor. 

Devan took a steadying breath, voice level again. “The Lord of Light is just and wise. We mortals cannot judge his plans for us.” His eyes still shone wetly as he took the princess’ hand. “Come on, Shireen, before Ser Perkin catches us."

As they moved toward the door, the princess wriggled free and darted back toward Theon. 

“‘Reena!” Devan hissed.

She bent down so her face was level with Theon’s. ““Thank you, Ser, for telling us about Lord Snow,” she whispered, “and you were kind to say that to Devan.” 

Without hesitation, she kissed him lightly on one filthy cheek. 

Then, she and Devan were out the door with a whisper of shoes on stone floors, and the click of the lock sliding home, leaving Theon dumbstruck on the floor, once again alone in the dark cell. 

He stared at the closed door, and brought a hand up to brush his gloved fingertips to his cheek where she’d kissed him. Too late, he realized he should have told her he was not a knight and she needn’t call him Ser.

* * *

The new boots Mully gave him were too big, and mismatched at that. One was taller than the other, with laces halfway up his calf, while the other buckled around the ankle, but with rags stuffed into the spaces where his missing toes might have gone, they served. At least his feet did not freeze on the walk from the King’s Tower to the armory. 

The trip seemed shorter today, but perhaps it was only that it was a less frigid morning. Overcast and grey, but without the sharp gusts that had cut right through to Theon’s bones the day before. It was still desperately cold though, the air in his lungs seemed to prickle and sting as though crystals of ice formed with every breath. 

Even still the wall was beautiful. It seemed a tall stone cliff today, not a sparkle or shimmer to be seen, but a great grey mass of cold granite, jutting proudly to the sky. Theon wondered if he’d ever see the top, or was he to trudge back and forth at its base until they finally killed him? 

Mully chatted amiably at him, told him how one boot had belonged to someone named Sweet Donnel Hill, and the other he had fairly wrestled off of Fulk the Flea. That morning, when he’d come to fetch Theon after breakfast, and found him still barefoot, he’d gone muttering down the stairs and returned only moments later with the pair of boots. Apparently Donnel had only left the one behind when he’d died, and Fulk was easily bullied into relinquishing a shoe. 

The ginger steward grew quiet once they entered the open door of the armory, and led him past the practice swords and odd bits of armor, through an unlit forge and past a great steel anvil. He pulled up short when they found the door beyond the forge closed, muffled voices coming from within. Mully glanced at Theon, then scratched at his bristle of orange stubble. He’d been cheerful up to that point, but now Theon could sense his discomfort. He knocked, but only once, and hesitantly at that.

Theon eyed the door. “I don’t suppose we’re seeing the blacksmith?” 

The door opened a crack, and Theon’s gaze was met by the big dark doe-eyes of the steward Satin. He glanced at each of them, then back into the room. “My lords, it’s Mully with Greyjoy.” He opened the door all the way to reveal a small room stuffed near to the brim with men.

“I’ll just be going then m’lords,” wheezed Mully, who was already edging backwards, “leave him in your hands then, Satin?” 

Satin shrugged and took the cord that still bound Theon’s wrists in hand. Mully was long gone by then.

As Theon shuffled in, the crowd of people resolved into half familiar faces: the first builder Othell Yarwyck, the drunken Septon, Satin, Tormund, as well as the red woman with her two guardsmen, and a few other odd brothers in black that Theon didn’t know. One by one they turned, and saw him, and moved aside, until hidden behind the mass of them, seated at a modest desk, Jon Snow came into view. He seemed small and mundane there, the only man sitting, wan and drawn.

“Out,” he said, his voice like rotten ice cracking underfoot, “all of you out.”

There was a great deal of grumbling, but almost everyone made their way to the door. Melisandre raised a red eyebrow, and Satin looked confused.

“My lord?” the steward asked.

“Even you, Satin, and Priestess, you especially. I would speak to the prisoner alone.”

Melisandre smiled a knowing smile, as though she and Jon shared some secret jape. “Think on what I’ve said, Lord Snow. There is duty, and there is Duty. Do not mistake one for the other.” She swept out, her two guards that had waited by the door seemed to be swept out with her, as boats with the tide. 

Satin lingered a moment more, he looked between the two of them with something that might have been concern, but did not offer any words of protest before he left. Once the door swung closed, Theon was alone with the Lord Commander.

He did not look like some kind of wicked dead thing. He wore gloves, so Theon could not have said if his hands were cold and black, but his eyes were as grey as they had ever been, if deeply shadowed and weary. But there was something eerie about him. He had some awful scars on his face, like something had tried to rip his eye out. 

Theon stood there, unsteady in his mismatched boots, waiting for him to speak. When he had imagined this meeting on the journey north, it had begun with Snow attacking him, flying at him in a rage and shouting about Bran and Rickon and how he had betrayed Robb. Or he imagined the block, kneeling in the snow while Jon Snow spoke in his father’s voice, listed Theon’s crimes, and when he swung the sword, it was Ice that came down on Theon’s neck. But all Jon did was put his hands on his desk and lever himself slowly to his feet. The sword belt that had been slung on the back of his chair held a blade much smaller than the black greatsword Ned Stark had wielded. Jon took it in one hand. If he leaned heavily on the other as he took a step, it didn’t show when he left the desk to approach Theon.

He had been taller than Jon once. All their lives he’d stood well above both of Lord Stark’s sons, he remembered lording it over him and Robb, holding a coveted toy up out of their reach, or teasing that they couldn’t draw his longbow, even until just before Jon had left for the wall, so long ago it seemed. Jon was well taller than him now, hunched and broken as he was, a long black shadow of a man, peering down with all the opaque icy regard that Lord Eddard had once commanded. There was nothing behind those grey eyes that Theon could decipher.

Jon looked at him, eyes narrow, searching for something in his ruined face.

Theon withered under his gaze, shrank back as much as he dared. He wanted to cast his eyes down, shuffle back to the corner, hide from his dark appraising stare. But he made himself meet his eyes. _He will kill me now_. Theon braced for whatever blow would surely come. 

But Snow never moved. He looked at him hard. _Does he not know me?_

“My lord?” Theon ventured. 

The silence stretched interminably, Jon might have been carved from stone, if not for the heat that came off of him. He was close enough that Theon could feel it, far more than the warmth from the fire.

“Jon?” he asked in a whisper. 

Jon took a sudden breath. It occurred to Theon that he couldn’t recall if he had been breathing at all before then. From the corner of his eye, Theon saw his hand move, the fingers flexed, then clenched. 

A queer look came over his face, he blinked. “I know you...” Jon murmured, more to himself than to Theon. He sounded surprised, almost wondering.

Then he remembered himself, and turned away from Theon to stare into the fire. He held the sheathed sword in two gloved hands, one on the scabbard and one the pommel. 

“They tell me you escaped Winterfell with my… with Lady Arya.” He did not look at Theon as he spoke. His voice was sure and steady and devoid of all emotion 

_We flew_ , “We jumped from the outer wall, Crowfood umber was below, he brought us to Stannis.”

“Who sent you to me.”

“He did.”

“To do with as I please.”

Theon shrugged, though Jon still wasn’t looking at him. “Stannis was grateful for your counsel on Arnolf Karstark’s treachery.” _And the tree told him to stay his hand._ Stannis would never admit as much, and the Freys had arrived just in time for him to plausibly postpone the execution, but there was a reason the godswood in Winterfell remained unburned, why he had readily granted Lady Arya’s request to send Theon away with his head still on his shoulders. 

Snow looked at the fire for another long silent moment, then he drew his sword. The end of the pommel was a carved wolf’s head, white stone and red garnet eyes. It was too long to be a longsword, a bastard blade, it glinted wickedly in the light from the hearth.

Grim faced, Jon turned to him. 

Theon was frozen to the spot, he could not have tried to run if he wanted to. 

In two steps, he closed the distance between them. But the sword did not plunge into Theon’s belly or his throat. Jon simply grabbed his wrist and drew the blade cleanly through the cord, freeing his hands. Theon could feel the heat of him through the leather glove.

“Stannis has sent me thirty men, I seem to find I have thirty-one black cloaks to spare. Take one if you want.” He sheathed the blade, turning away once again, he spoke down at the sword in his hands. “Or remain a prisoner of the crown, and go with the queen back to Winterfell to take whatever justice Stannis has for you. I don’t care. I’ve no authority to take your head in either case. Whatever you’ve done, it’s not my place to punish. The Night’s Watch takes no part.” His voice was flat and affectless as his eyes had been. 

Theon stood there gaping a moment. And for the first time in as long as he could possibly remember, felt anger flare hot in his chest. 

“You don’t care?” 

It all seemed suddenly too much to bear, the secrets and the fear, the dreading and dreading a final punishment for crimes for which he had already paid and paid again. And here he was at the mercy of the one man left who truly had reason to hate Theon Turncloak, and he hadn’t even said the names of the boys, his little brothers who all the world thought Theon had murdered. 

“You don’t _fucking_ care?”

Jon didn’t so much as twitch. 

Theon found it in him then to laugh a real laugh, not a manic giggle, a nasty cough of a laugh. “Fine,” he spat. If Jon wanted to play magnanimous, he was far beyond being too proud to accept charity. “I’ll take your black cloak, bastard.” 

That had always been enough to make Jon wince, or stiffen in anger, but he didn’t even look back at Theon. He turned to the door. “Satin,” he called, and the steward popped his head in, he must have been just outside. “Get this recruit some blacks, and let him pick a cell.” 

Satin’s eyes widened slightly, and he took in the cut cord on the floor, Jon’s sword in his hands, the look on Theon’s face. He nodded silently. When he opened the door wider, a raven jumped from Satin's shoulder and swooped to land on the back of the chair. It was a huge bird, shaggy and old. All three of them watched it. 

The bird just ruffled its feathers and sat smugly. "Ghost," it said to nobody in particular, then, "Corn? Corn?" 

Jon let out a breath through his nose that could have been a laugh. The tension broken, Satin motioned for Theon to follow him.

They were almost out the door when Jon spoke up again “And Satin?” he said to their backs, “Take him to the baths and wash him, he reeks.”

Theon couldn’t help but flinch.


End file.
